Ghosts That We Knew
by snarkvenger
Summary: At 17, Maddie Grace Dixon is, in every way, her father's daughter. Hot-headed and stubborn and outspoken and, now, utterly lost. After being separated from her family in the hell that earth's become, Maddie must fight to survive and somehow, someway, find her uncle and her daddy again. "So give me hope in the darkness that I will see the light, cause oh that gave me such a fright".
1. Give Me Hope in the Darkness

**Disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters or story lines. I do own my OCs and a computer.

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you all enjoy this one. This is my first Walking Dead fic. The rating may go up later due to language and sexual content in later chapters, but I have't made any concrete decisions about that yet. Also, this chapter may be a bit slow, but I promise things will pick up very, very soon!

* * *

The corpses were everywhere, a great swell of them pushing through the street. Their loud groans and scuffling, dragging feet drowned out every other sound as they reached out with rotting fingers, desperate to satisfy their craving for flesh.

An arrow swished past her head and she felt her heart quicken as it drove itself into the skull of a corpse.

"Jesus, girl!" she heard her uncle Daryl behind her. Maddie shook her head and hefted her bow up as her uncle came to stand beside her, shooting another arrow from his crossbow and taking out another corpse. Maddie nocked an arrow, quickly aiming and fire and knocking down a corpse a fraction of a second before Daryl hit his third target.

"This is a waste a' arrows," Maddie shouted. She heard gunshots on her other side and didn't have to turn to know her daddy was there, rifle raised, taking down as many of the rotting, used-to-be-humans as he could. As they kept firing arrows and bullets and curses the dead kept coming. For every one that was brought down, another two shuffled forward to take their place.

"Get down!" she heard her daddy yell and in an instant she was on the ground, the rough pavement cutting into her open palms, her bow caught underneath her. She turned slightly to see her father's boots crunch along the gravel, his rifle poised in his hands, firing over and over again. She looked to where he was firing and saw even more of those…._things_ coming towards them. Daryl saw them, too, but left them to Merle as he continued firing at the corpses ahead of them. He'd shouldered his crossbow by now and was firing a pistol, his mouth silently moving over numbers as he counted how many bullets he had left.

Maddie hastily pushed herself up, scraping her knuckles as she picked up her bow. She pulled an arrow from the mounted quiver, glancing around as she loaded her weapon. She shot a corpse that was closing in on her daddy and when he felt the rush of wind from her arrow he glanced back at her, and then past her.

"Fuckin' go!" he shouted suddenly. Daryl whipped around at his words. He followed his brothers eyes and nodded. Maddie chanced a look over her shoulder; the woods, that's what they were looking it. That's what they were telling her. They each took off at a sprint towards the trees, their home away from way long before Hell began spitefully spitting out the dead.

Something went wrong, though. As they scrambled to their safe haven, a few straggling walkers followed them. Merle, being the closest to the walkers, stopped dead in his tracks and whirled around to face them.

"Daddy!" Maddie shrieked, but her uncle had grabbed her wrist and was tugging her with him while her daddy was telling her to just shut up and go, god-fucking-dammit, run!

"Keep runnin'," Daryl huffed and Maddie just grunted, nearly tripping over her own feet to keep up with him. Then she tripped for real, over a tree root of all things, and Daryl stumbled in front of her, fighting to keep himself standing.

"I'm fine," she said, rushed, when she saw his look of concern, and with her words he looked more annoyed than anything as she forced herself to her feet. In a way, though, it was a blessing that she'd tripped, because if she hadn't she wouldn't have seen the corpse that was crawling towards them, its legs awkwardly dragging behind it. There was another behind it, this one walking, ambling towards them at a quicker pace. "Uncle Daryl!" Maddie shouted, pointing, and he pushed her behind him as he took out one.

"I'm outta rounds," he ground out. "You keep runnin' now, we'll catch up to you," Daryl ordered, swinging his crossbow around the front. "Don't just keep standin' there, Maddie Grace, get yer ass outta here!"

Maddie didn't need anymore encouragement than that. She ran, sprinting and stumbling and tripping over herself and the roots of the streets, leaves crunching underfoot, until her legs just wouldn't carry her anymore. She found a quiet place to stop and sat herself beneath a tree, dropping her rucksack and bow on the ground beside her. She fished out a bottle of water out of her pack and took a generous swig before popping the cap back on and waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

And waiting.

* * *

She carefully unfolded the paper, wary of the deepening creases that threatened to tear at any second. Her eyes flitted over the tally marks she'd already made before she pulled her stub of a pencil from the pocket of her jeans and added another shaky one to the lineup. She counted them again: fifteen. She'd been on her own for fifteen long, grueling days and along the way she'd seen corpses and squirrels and mosquitoes, but not once had Maddie Grace spotted another human being. She folded up the slip of notebook paper again and stuffed it and her pencil into her pocket as she rose to her feet. A cool breeze blew past her as she adjusted her rucksack on her back. She scanned the sky, chewing on her lower lip as she realized that she only had a few more hours before the sun dipped down below the horizon.

She glanced around, peeking into the car she'd been hiding behind. A few times during her travels she'd broken into cars, but the last time she did it she hadn't been alone. Her uncle had backed her up, disengaging the alarm before the corpses heard it. That was the one main thing she'd learned about them- corpses worshiped sound. They seemed to possess dog-like hearing, a useful adaptation for a creature whose only purpose was to kill and devour everything that moved. But she could see a water bottle resting in the cup holder, and she'd just finished her last water bottle a good half hour ago. She wasn't sure when she would be hit another store that hadn't been completely wiped out of the stuff, or when she'd stumble across a creek to fill up the empty bottles that were now only taking up space in her pack.

Maddie sighed heavily and swung her bag around to the front, fishing through it for something to break the window with. She produced a can of peas that seemed to be her best bet and dropped her bag to the ground, where it landed, slumped, beside her bow, and gripped the can tight. She thrust it towards the window, wincing as the glass shattered. She waited, dreading the moans and groans of the dead, but none of them drifted to her ears. Satisfied, Maddie dropped the canned peas back into her pack and reached into the car, a bit of broken glass slicing the tender skin of her forearm as she struggled to unlock the vehicle.

"Fuck," she cursed under breath as blood started to drip down her arm. She finally got the lock to release and swung the door open hastily, grabbing at the water bottle before reaching across to the glove compartment. Inside the glove box was a small first aid kit, just big enough to fit inside a ladies' purse, and she snatched it up along with a plastic baggie of goldfish crackers that she found on the back seat. She pushed herself out of the cramped sedan and stuffed her findings into her bag. She let out a long breath that she hadn't noticed she'd been holding as she swung her rucksack over her shoulders and picked her bow off of the ground. She started making her way away from the main street, towards the rows of little houses where she hoped to find a place to sleep. And then she heard it- the shuffling feet, the labored breathing, the pained groans that clung to every shaky breath. Without thinking, Maddie plucked an arrow from the mounted quiver of her bow, nocking it with ease, and drew back the bowstring, swinging around and, as quickly as she could, lining her pin sight up with her target's glassy, dead eye.

Maddie let the arrow fly, but her hasty preparations had failed her and it clattered on the pavement beside the rotting, used-to-be-Converse sneakers of a corpse that was once a teenage boy.

"Wha' the hell," Maddie scolded herself, reloading and aiming for the head. Her second arrow buried itself in the skull, just shy of hitting the corpse right in the eye. Maddie couldn't help but smile to herself as the thing fell in a heap on the ground. She raced up to it, kicking it so that it was on its back and using all of her strength to yank the arrow free from its head. She wrinkled her nose at the gore that dripped from it and wiped some of it off on her own jeans before reaching over the dead-again corpse to retrieve her failed arrow. She replaced them both on her quiver and quickly scanned the area. When she saw no more corpses, she turned back and continued on her way.

It didn't take Maddie long to find a little two-story colonial to hunker down in for the night. The street sign on the corner, which had been knocked down and trampled on, read, under a layer of grime, Maple Ave, and every house on the block resembled the one beside it, the only variations existing in the hues of their siding. Maddie picked a pale blue one with garden gnomes tipped over on the beds of abused flowers. They'd probably been crushed by the corpses, Maddie figured, or maybe they'd been destroyed by the pounding of a hundred sneakered feet as the town's residents raced each other to the refugee centers. The worn wooden boards of the porch creaked under her feet and when she came to the door she jimmied the handle first, just to be certain that it wasn't locked, before nudging it open with her boot.

The house smelled like death. Maddie gripped her bow tight, pulling an arrow from the quiver just in case she might need it. She walked slowly, careful not to trip over the pairs of shoes and the few coats that littered the floor of the mudroom. She stepped into the main house, coming across the source of the awful stench in the plainly decorated living room- a decaying corpse slumped over in arm chair. Maddie nocked the arrow she'd been holding, her fingers poised on the bowstring as she circled around the chair. She breathed a sigh of relief when she saw a bullet hole in the thing's skull.

And then her heart dropped into her stomach, where she could feel it beat like a war drum. She glanced around, seeing a note on the table beside the armchair that simply read "I'm sorry"- a two word suicide note- but she didn't see a gun. Not on the table or on the floor or in the dead man's lap.

"Shit," Maddie muttered. "Aw, fuck."

She straightened herself up and drew back her bowstring, moving swiftly and quietly through the house. She silently cursed herself when the floorboards moaned under her weight but carried on, pointing her weapon around every corner before she dared to turn it. The kitchen was clear. The tiny dining room was empty save for the dying sunflowers in a hand-painted vase on the table. She used her foot to open the closet in the hall, only to be startled by the tumble of linens that fell out at her. Maddie quickly regained her composure, adjusting her grip on the bow as she turned toward the staircase.

She ascended narrow stairs awkwardly, having to run sideways to fit herself and her loaded bow, and when her foot hit the top step and she paused to right herself she heard the click of the lock on a door. There was someone else in the house. If her suspicions were correct, they were armed with whatever firearm the man downstairs had used to end his life. Who knew if they had other weapons on top of that? And what she dealing with one person or more?

For a fleeting second Maddie considered just turning around and finding another house. But it was pitch black out there by now, and whoever was in here might come after her, so she pulled on the bowstring a bit harder, lining her hand up with her jaw just like her daddy had taught her, and resolved to keep moving forward. She walked painfully slow, heel, toe, heel, toe, down the dark hallway. The door to the first two rooms she passed, one on either side of her, were slightly ajar to a reveal a bathroom and bedroom respectively. There was one more door on the left, swung fully open, that looked something like an office. The last door on the right was shut tight.

Maddie breathed heavily. She stared down the door as though she were trying to burn it with the sheer intensity of her gaze. She tensed when she heard light footsteps on the other side- heavier than her own, but it sounded like the person was trying to make themselves quiet- and the door handle wavered slightly from the weight of a somebody's hand.

The lock clicked.

The door knob twisted.

The seconds passed at a glacial speed and Maddie was beginning to wonder if maybe her overtired mind were just playing some stupid tricks on her. After all, she'd spent her first week in the woods sleeping with one eye open in the branches of trees (a few times she'd fallen out of them, accounting for the blacks and blues that lined her back and hips). The second week was spent in truck beds and store fronts and houses like this one, but never in her fifteen days of lone traveling had she ever really let herself relax.

She was pulled from her thoughts by the squeaking of hinges as the door slowly opened. A semi-automatic poked out slowly, so slowly that at first she only saw the muzzle, then the tiny bump of the front sight before the full barrel slid into view. She could vaguely make out the shadow of fingers poised over trigger.

There she stood, an arrow aimed at an opponent she couldn't see, unable to tear her eyes away from the little droplets of long-dried blood on the barrel of the gun.

"Ya gonna do somethin' with that?" Maddie growled impatiently. She almost flinched when a finger twitched over the trigger.

"Depends," a male voice replied.

"On what?" Maddie demanded.

"What're you going to do with that?"

Maddie weighed her options for a minute before lessening the tension on her bowstring.

"Why don't you come out here?" she tried.

"Why don't you stop pointing that thing at me?"

"I don' see you droppin' yers," Maddie snarled. There was a moment of hesitation before the gun disappeared from view. "Alrigh' then, come on out," she coaxed. The man cleared his throat. She rolled her eyes at the shifting shadows, assuming that he was motioning towards her bow. "Fine," she complied, gently releasing the tension on her the string until she could safely free the arrow from it.

There was another moment where nothing seemed to happen and Maddie half considered loading the damn bow and shooting whoever this was where he stood. Then the shadows moved again, and there were footsteps coming closer, and then she wasn't looking at shadows anymore but rather the face of a young man. He seemed like he was not too much older than her, perhaps early twenties at the most, with short brown hair and a smooth face.

"You gonna tell me what you're doing here?" he asked, looking her up and down with dark brown eyes. Maddie eyed him carefully. He stood at least a head taller than her and had a muscular build. The gun he held now nonchalantly and unchallenging at his side fit his hand all too well.

"Lookin' fer a place ta crash," Maddie answered honestly. The man considered this.

"What's your name?" he asked eventually.

"Maddie," she replied. "Maddie Grace Dixon."

The man nodded, as if he were considering.

"Don't suppose you got a name?" Maddie pressed.

"Dylan," he replied. "Dylan Brenner." He tucked the gun into his belt when he noticed Maddie's eyes kept flitting towards it, removing the threat. She chewed the inside of her cheek, twirling her arrow between her fingers before retiring it to the quiver. "So," Dylan continued. "You need a place to crash?"

"Jus' fer a night," Maddie reasoned. "Then I'll be outta yer hair."

Dylan just kept watching her. He looked between Maddie and her hunting bow a few times before pointing it. "You any good with that?" Maddie shrugged.

"Not bad," she said almost defensively. A smile spread across Dylan's face.

"You a good hunter?" he asked.

"Good enough," she said. "If yer askin' fer payment or somethin', I got some rabbit meat from my last kill. I ain't been huntin' fer a few days, but the meat's still good if ya want it."

"No payment," Dylan said. "But maybe a partner? I've been on my own for a while now, and to be honest I'm getting sick of canned shit every night."

"What d'you mean partner?" Maddie asked. "Like a travelin' partner or something'?"

"Yeah, a traveling partner," Dylan confirmed. Maddie thought it over- after fifteen days on her own, she was feeling tired and run down and rusty. It wouldn't be terrible to have somebody else around. They could sleep in shifts, she figured, and maybe, if he was quiet enough, he could cover her back while she hunted. "What do you say?" Dylan asked. What her father do?

_Deck 'im_, Maddie thought almost immediately. Her daddy didn't take help from no one. Maddie sighed. She knew she could survive on her own if she had to, but Dylan was right there, holding out his hand for her to shake.

"If ya ever scare off the game then I'm cuttin' ya loose," she warned, but she took his hand anyway. Dylan smiled at her.

"Somehow, Miss Maddie Dixon, I don't doubt that."


	2. Forward Motion

**Disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters or story lines. I do own my OCs and a computer.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed and favorited and added this story to their alerts so far! You guys are really awesome! I wanted to get this chapter up sooner, but midterms sort of got in the way. But I'm on spring break now and I'm hoping to get at least one other chapter up for you before I go back to school. I hope you all enjoy this one! Reviews are always appreciated!

* * *

"Where do we go from here?" Daryl asked late one night. He and Merle had been staying at a camp with other survivors for a few days now. They'd stumbled upon on it while searching for Maddie and decided to stay in case she found it, too.

"A group is goin' out to Atlanta tomorrow," Merle replied. "I volunteered to go with 'em."

"What?" Daryl shot up on his cot, the sudden movement causing all the blood to rush to his head. He caught himself on his elbows and kept his eyes on his brother, who hadn't bothered to look at him until he asked, "What for?"

"Gotta keep 'em trustin' us," Merle replied as if it were obvious.

"What're you talkin' about?" Daryl asked.

"We get 'em to trust us, then take what we can," he reasoned. "Get the hell outta here. We been here fer days and ain't seen no trace of her. If we can get some supplies off a' these people we'll be better off."

Daryl was silent for a while, mulling over his brother's plan. He sighed heavily.

"I guess I'll go huntin' while yer gone, then," he finally replied. Merle's lips twitched up in a smirk.

"Alrigh'," he agreed. "Then, when I get back, we'll wait until they're all sleepin'. Gather up the stuff and get goin'. We'll be long gone 'fore they notice anythin'."

"An' where exactly are we headin'?" Daryl asked. Merle was quiet for a while. Daryl almost thought he'd fallen asleep until his voice, rough and worn and tired, broke the silence.

"Forward," he said simply.

* * *

"Hey, Maddie!" Dylan called across the small convenience store. Maddie turned to see him standing by a small DVD display filled with those cheap, straight-to-video releases that no one ever really bought. He was holding up one of the movies with a title in red block lettering and a decaying face on the cover. She walked the few paces to stand beside him and took the DVD from his hands.

"Almost looks like the real thing, don't it?" she said with a laugh.

"Before we knew there was going to be a real thing," Dylan replied.

"Those were the days," Maddie said. She sighed then and shook her head, bringing herself back to reality, where the dead could walk through the streets and not just on TV screens, and placed the movie back on the plastic shelf. "Come on, we're here for supplies," she said then, all business.

"Right," Dylan agreed quickly. The two had been traveling together for all of four days, including this one, covering short distances in the daylight and hunkering down in a truck bed at night. Their first day had been the hardest, as first days often are. They were both wary of each other, always watching and studying one another, each one untrusting. When they'd left the little colonial they'd found each other in they were practically tripping over each other and they argued at every turn.

Five corpses had attacked them that day. They fought awkwardly at first, lunging for the same targets, shouting at each other, until Dylan stopped responding to Maddie's cursing long enough to aim his gun over her shoulder and kill a corpse as it raised its grimy, filthy hands towards her. She'd spun around then, in time to drive the blade of her hunting knife into another corpse's skull, and then she felt Dylan's back pressed against hers as he fought off the last of their opponents.

In the aftermath, as the adrenaline faded and they were left sweating and out of breath and surrounded by bodies that had now died twice, they looked to one another and simply nodded. That night they'd slept side by side in the bed of a rusted pickup truck. Dylan told Maddie about how his father had become one of those _things_ and how he'd watched him tear his mother apart. He told her about how he'd tried to protect his sisters, and how killing his father was the only way to do that.

"It was weird, though," Dylan had whispered that night, staring up at the sky that was so littered with stars. "He wasn't my dad anymore, you know? He was just this…this dead thing that was forced to live again, as if dying once wasn't enough."

He went on to explain that he'd gone to a refugee center with his sisters. He had two, one that was thirteen and another that was only eight. The eight year old did nothing but cry and cling to him, while the older girl cursed him because "you killed him, how could you do that, you killed daddy!" and no matter many times Dylan had tried to explain to her that that thing wasn't daddy she wouldn't stop.

The refugee center had been overrun with corpses two days after that. There was a great scramble, bodies both living and dead working far too hard against each other to get in or to get out and in the chaos Dylan lost track of both of the girls.

He'd been on his own ever since.

There had been a long stretch of silence in which they both just stared at the stars, a sight that felt too beautiful for a world where the dead so greatly outnumbered the living, until Dylan asked Maddie what had happened to her.

"I got lost," she said simply. "Or they did- my daddy and my uncle, I mean. One minute we're fine, drivin' along, tryin'a think a' where to go, and the next there's all these corpses everywhere and we're fightin' and yellin' an' they told me to run. They told me they'd find me later."

"And they never did?" Dylan asked after Maddie went quiet too long. The girl swallowed hard past the lump that was forming in her throat and she blinked a few times because Dixons don't cry, Goddammit, they don't, and she nodded her head.

"I waited for 'em," she said. "But I couldn't jus' sit there anymore. I ain't seen any sign of 'em since."

The truck that they slept in had half a tank of gas and a set of keys on the driver's seat, so on the second day they drove it to the tree line and ventured into the woods. Dylan walked as quietly as he could behind Maddie, although it never seemed quiet enough judging by the looks and the occasional "_shhh!_" thrown his way. By some stroke of luck the only dead things they encountered that day were the three squirrels that Maddie shot down. They returned to the truck and Maddie showed Dylan how to build a fire- what wood to use and how to start it- and he continued with this task while she worked on skinning and gutting her kills.

"You think they're still out there?" Dylan had asked once the fire had sparked. The sun was going down by then, its fading light casting strange shadows across the dirt and grass.

"Who?" Maddie asked absently, not looking up from her work.

"Your family," Dylan explained. He sighed and then added, "My sisters. Do you think they're still alive?"

"Could be," Maddie answered with a shrug. She was arranging the meat on a spit now and once she was done she came to kneel next to Dylan by the fire. They were both silent for a while, watching the flames and the cooking squirrel meat.

"I've never eaten squirrel before," Dylan said if only to break the silence.

"First time for everything," Maddie replied. She reached into her rucksack and fished out a can of peas. Dylan raised his eyebrows as she forced the can open and set it up to cook. "What? You think that jus' 'cause the world's gone to shit ya don't have to eat yer veggies anymore?"

That got a laugh out of a Dylan, a real one that caught on and soon they were talking lightly about how the world used to be over their meager dinner. The conversation died down with the fire and soon enough they were returning to the truck bed for another night.

It rained on the third day. They spent most of their day in the truck, driving along abandoned roads and trying to make out the names of stores and the outlines of neighborhoods through the splashes of water. Dylan saw Maddie's tally that day. He had been driving, and so she thought he wasn't looking when she slipped it and her stub of a pencil out of her pocket to mark it with the eighteenth line.

The thing about the apocalypse, though, was that there were no other drivers around, and so the only real incentive for Dylan to keep his eyes on the road was the rain coming down in sheets. But the rain was starting to let up, the clouds starting to drift and move on, and sure enough Dylan had torn his eyes away from the gray ribbon of the road to find Maddie staring at that little slip of notebook paper.

"What's that?" Dylan had asked.

"Oh," Maddie said, jumping slightly at his voice. "Oh, nothin'. Just, um. It's a tally. I started it when I got split up from my family. Helps me keep track of the days."

Dylan nodded his understanding and he didn't talk for a few minutes. Then he asked, "So you still have hope, then?" Maddie looked at him quizzically. "Hope that you'll find them, I mean."

"Dixons are stubborn. We don't die easy," she said, and then she tore her gaze away from Dylan. "Yeah," she went on without looking at him. "I've got some hope."

They'd found a sporting goods store that day. It had been mostly looted, but Maddie's idea to check the back storage rooms resulted in them finding a small tent and sleeping bags. They had to kill off three corpses to get them, and two more on the floor where they found a package of beef jerky and some extra shirts that they stuffed into their bags.

With their new equipment, Maddie suggested that they try to find more supplies and then head into the woods. She'd said that if they could camp out for at least a few nights it would give her more time to hunt and build up their food supply, and she also offered to teach Dylan a few things that her father and uncle had taught her- which berries were poisonous and that sort of thing. She explained all of this to Dylan that night, and he hopped on board willingly.

This was all true, of course. A few extra kills would do them some good, and Dylan had said he wanted to learn a few more survival skills. "All the things I know are from the Discovery Channel," he'd joked.

But Maddie also knew that if there was one place her family would be, it was the woods. Her daddy always said he felt more comfortable under the cover of the trees. Hell, she'd been half-raised among bushes and berries with twigs snapping and leaves crunching underfoot as she trailed behind her father or, sometimes, her Uncle Daryl, their broad shoulders always blocking out the harsh glare of the sun.

She wasn't lying when she said she had hope, and her hope resided in the wilderness.

* * *

In all of his years, Daryl Dixon had never felt so utterly and hopelessly alone.

He'd had moments, of course- stretches of loneliness that left scars on both his body and his heart. But even the worst of those moments couldn't compare with the feeling he had begun welling inside of him, hot and unrelenting in his chest, the moment he realized that his brother wasn't coming back.

_He ain't dead_, Daryl kept repeating over and over again in his head, a mantra that would half-calm the raging feeling in his gut that hadn't fully settled since the group had returned from Atlanta without Merle. _He ain't dead. He ain't dead. He ain't dead._

There were so many years that Merle wasn't in his life. They were born so far apart, and when Daryl was too young to remember clearly, Merle had taken off. He'd come home now and then, and those were always good days. He'd hear the roar of an engine- it was always a different one until the day Merle bought his bike- and he'd race outside before his father could stop him. He'd spend the whole day with his brother, feeling excited and for a few hours really, truly happy until Merle dropped him back off at the house and he had go to back to reality.

Merle showed up less and less as Daryl got older. He didn't really call at all. He was always either too busy, or too high, or he was incarcerated or one of his many girlfriends had forced him into a rehab center that he'd break out of or get kicked out of two days later. Eventually Daryl's heart stopped skipping at the sound of rumbling engine passing the house because he forced his brain to stop thinking that it could be Merle.

After their old man died, Daryl saw a bit more of his brother. He moved back to their small town. He met a girl at a bar. Daryl stayed living in their childhood home because he couldn't afford to go anywhere else. Merle took to leaving his bike in the driveway because the girl he'd been fucking was too scared to go on it. Daryl wondered why he didn't just cut her loose like he did with so many that had those kinds of complaints. He would eventually get his answer in the form of 5.7 pounds of tiny, flailing limbs about nine months after Merle had switched his bike for the pickup truck.

The mother, her name was Tess, she wanted the baby to have Merle's last name. When mother and child, dubbed Madelyn Grace Dixon, were discharged from the hospital, Merle moved into Tess's one-bedroom apartment with her and for a short while everything was okay.

Then Merle and Tess started fighting. Every day it was something and nine times out of ten it resulted in Merle sleeping on the couch, or passed out drunk in his truck outside the local bar. A few times he'd even wound up at Daryl's. Then came the night that Merle stormed through Daryl's front door with a wailing barely-five month old in his arms. Maddie Grace was crying, and Merle was cursing over her, and that made her cry louder and that made him yell more and more until he finally dumped the child into Daryl's arms and slumped on the couch, all of his energy exhausted.

Daryl had sat down next to Merle, trying to balance the tasks of talking his brother out of his rage and soothing his sobbing, too tiny niece, and from Merle's short responses he'd discovered that Tess had left. She'd gotten fed up and she said some dumb shit and she just up and left. It's not like she just went back to her parents house a town over, or to her friend's apartment like she sometimes did. From what Daryl gathered, the woman had told Merle that she'd already made her decision and she had a plane ticket for California- her sister lived there, and she was going there to stay.

"Fuckin' bitch walked out on 'er Goddamn daughter," Merle had sighed, his tired eyes looking to the infant that was squirming in Daryl's arms.

It was decided then that Merle and Maddie Grace would move in with Daryl, and for seventeen years that was just the way things were.

And now Daryl had lost them both.

_They ain't dead_, Daryl mentally scolded himself. They were Dixons, and Dixons don't just die.

But sometimes they're reckless, and sometimes they don't think things through. Sometimes they get scared (although not a single one would ever admit to feeling afraid) and they act on their instincts and they cut off their own fucking hands because they think that's the only way to save themselves. Sometimes, they stumble away injured, thinking that they can still pull through if they just keep moving.

The group would be moving on in the morning. He wasn't entirely listening when the two cops were talking about the plan. He tried to, but his mind kept coming up with pictures of Maddie and Merle and he kept wondering where they were. Once or twice the thought of one of them turning up as one of those things, those walkers, as the people here were calling them, would come up and he'd blink fast and shake his head to make it go away.

_They ain't dead_, he kept telling himself over and over again. _They ain't fucking dead_.

Merle had laid out a plan that Daryl could still stick to. If he kept close to the group, he could snatch a few things away from them. He could gather it all up slowly and discreetly so that nobody would notice and then one day he could just slip away.

_And where exactly are ya headin'_? came a voice in his head that sounded like a too distant version of his own. Merle's voice answered, "Forward."

* * *

Milton Mamet was a very scientific man.

He was not made for fieldwork at all. He was meant to work in a lab or an office, somewhere that had four walls and a roof over his head. He was meant to sit in a comfortable chair while pouring over notes and writing reports. His mind was geared towards controlled experiments.

The world, however, had morphed into one in which the scientific, desk job types would have to adapt to survive. This was why Milton found himself out on the streets of biter-infested Atlanta, Georgia, a clipboard clutched to his chest and a knife in one hand ("Just in case," the Governor had said when he presented Milton with the weapon). Martinez and three other well-bodied Woodbury men were with him. The Governor had gotten the group together shortly after Milton proposed a trip into the city. He needed subjects to study, he'd explained, and the Governor had understood.

They took two vehicles into Atlanta, one stolen police van and one Jeep. They avoided highly populated areas and focused more on side streets and alleyways where they would find one or two biters at a time, occasionally three but never more than four. The rowdier, hungrier ones, those that put up too much of a fight, were put down right away by Martinez's men. The rest were wrestled into the back of the van. Milton oversaw the whole thing. He pointed out where the biters were and kept track of how many they'd gathered.

They were getting ready to head back to Woodbury when Milton first spotted him. He slowed the Jeep down to get a better look at the slumped-over figure. Had they missed him on their first go? Had they just skipped over this alley?

Martinez, who was sitting in the passenger seat with his gun resting on his lap, raised an eyebrow in question.

"There's one more," Milton said. Martinez followed his gaze and nodded. He slipped out of the Jeep, motioning towards the police van to catch his team's attention. Milton's curiosity got the best of him. He'd been hanging back most of the time, but this time there was only one biter there and it hadn't moved since he spotted it.

Martinez and the others were already halfway down the alley by the time Milton slid out of the car. He jogged towards them in time to see the figure raise its head slightly towards the oncoming group. Martinez held out a hand to slow down the three other armed men. Milton came to a halt behind them, straining over their heads to catch a glimpse of the figure.

It was male. His skin was devoid of color and his left arm cradled his right, keeping it close to his chest which was rising and falling with great effort. Sweat and dirt and grime mingled together all over his skin and clothes. His eyes were dull and tired as he watched the group warily. His breath was strained, causing him to wheeze and gasp and grunt and every now and then those tired eyes would flit back and forth like he was looking for an escape.

Milton, overcome with curiosity, pushed his way slowly to the front of the group. The man made a sound at the back of his throat that made Milton hesitate. Martinez hefted up his gun, reminding Milton that his back was covered. Milton swallowed thickly and took another step forward. He paused, and then moved forward again. The man flinched slightly and he pushed himself up just a bit, leaning on the gray brick wall beside him. His mouth was moving but there were no real words coming out of it, just low, rasping sounds punctuated with pain.

Milton held up his hands. The man pushed himself up a bit further, wincing at the effort, but he never broke eye contact. Those pale eyes kept staring at him, boring into him, daring him to get closer.

Milton kept on going. The man tried to back away, making more slurred sounds that weren't quite words. The awkward half-kneeling position he'd been in didn't allow him to get very far before he stumbled and fell back, his knee slamming against the pavement.

"Fuck!" the man cursed and a little red flag sprung up in Milton's mind. He'd never heard a biter talk before. He took another step and the man's eyes found him again. The man huffed out a breath and it sounded like he was cursing more but he was back to slurring and grunting and Milton couldn't make sense of a single thing coming out of his mouth.

He looked down the man's arms, how one was held so close to him like he were a bird with a broken wing. He saw blood staining the skin, bright and fresh, only slightly dulled by the mingling grime and sweat it was mixing with. Biters don't bleed, either.

"I-It's not a biter," Milton stammered. He turned back to the group. Four guns were pointed at him. No, not at him, Milton reminded himself, they were meant for the man on the ground who was still trying his damndest to curse them all. "_He's_ not a biter."

Milton got close enough to crouch down beside the man who was making every effort he could to scramble away but couldn't get too far.

"It's okay, hey, stop, I can help you, it's okay," Milton said over and again, all of his words rushed and panicked and desperate as he tried to get the man to stop. "I could use some help!" Milton called over the ailing man's protests. Milton stood and stepped back and let two of Martinez's team haul up the man, who fought against them with all of his might, going so far as to pull his injured hand away from his body to bat at them and that's when Milton noticed that there was no injured hand, just oozing blood that spilled everywhere and soaked the man's clothes.

"Get him in the Jeep," Milton said.

"You sure?" Martinez asked.

"We c-can't just leave him here," Milton replied. "Put him in the Jeep, in the backseat. We're taking him back. He needs a doctor."

By the time the men had wrestled the man back to the cars and forced him into the back of the Jeep, the man had passed out cold. Milton asked Martinez to drive back, tossing him the keys and tugging the small first aid kit they'd brought with them out from underneath the passenger's seat before settling himself in the back with the nameless, one-handed man.

The only indication that the man hadn't died yet was the occasional groan and a few mumbled, slurred words that Milton assumed were supposed to start with 'F'.


	3. Keep You Safe

**Disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters or story lines. I do own my OCs and a computer.

I meant to get this one up sooner, but I was having some issues writing it. It's finally finished though, and overall I'm pretty happy with this chapter, though. Also, I just wanted to say that this story will be following the basic plot of the show with some changes, minor and major, to incorporate Maddie. So, enjoy reading and please review!

* * *

"Yer gonna make a real of mess of things if ya do it that way," Maddie critiqued from her spot next to Dylan. They'd abandoned their pickup truck at the tree line the previous morning and set up camp in a small clearing. Maddie had managed to shoot down two squirrels as they walked through the dense trees in search of their campsite. They'd set up camp by late afternoon, which had given Maddie enough time to hide snares in the thicker trees around their temporary home.

They'd slept in shifts that night, Dylan offering to take the first watch. He'd sat outside the tent until he could barely keep his eyes open and then roused Maddie so that they could switch spots. She'd woken him early that morning before setting out to check her traps.

"Some of them are deeper in the woods than others," she'd explained when he emerged from the tent, still rubbing sleep from his eyes. "I shouldn't be gone too long, but if there's any trouble you whistle like this." She paused to demonstrate the call, one that her daddy had taught her years ago. Two quick, high, sharp whistles, and one lower one, dragged out just a little bit and getting higher in pitch at the end. "I'll hear ya. I'll send out the same call if somethin' happens out there."

Thankfully, that morning garnered no need for the Dixon distress signal. Maddie had returned about an hour later with a rabbit and three more squirrels. She'd tossed the kills down next to Dylan, who had been sorting through the non-perishables the two had scrounged up before leaving the shriveled husk of civilization behind them, and announced to Dylan that she was going to teach him how to prepare the meat. Apparently, he was not learning quickly enough for her liking.

Maddie twisted her hunting knife out of the boy's grip and leaned over him towards the recently-skinned squirrel sitting on a semi-clean cloth on Dylan's lap.

"Ya don't want to make the cut too deep," she said, trying and failing to sound patient. "The guts'll spill out all over. You start here-" she poked at the breastbone with the tip of the knife- "and you make a little cut. Ya gotta work yer way down slowly-" she dragged the knife downward toward the animal's pelvic bones "-avoidin' all the organs, 'specially around here." She waved the knife in a circle over the squirrel's abdomen where most of the vital organs were.

"When the hell did you learn all of this?" Dylan asked when Maddie passed the knife back to him. Maddie shrugged her shoulders.

"Daddy said food was sometimes scarce when he was growin' up, so his daddy taught him to hunt. My daddy taught my uncle, and it was jus' a part a' their lives, I guess, so it only seemed natural that they'd both teach me," she replied. "I guess it's just a family tradition."

"My family traditions seem boring compared to yours," Dylan said, his brow furrowed in concentration as he cut carefully down the length of the squirrel. Maddie laughed, her hand casually reaching over to pull the knife from his hand again. She set it down beside her and guided Dylan's hand toward the squirrel's hind legs.

"Hold it down like that," she instructed. "Push the legs back to open up the belly- yeah, jus' like that. Then start pullin' on the intestines. Not too hard, though."

Dylan grimaced at the squishing sounds that came when he did as Maddie told him and started tugging the animal's intestines and blood vessels loose. Maddie's hand hovered over his, occasionally tugging at bits that he'd missed.

"And my family traditions were definitely less gory than yours," he added. Maddie's lips twitched into a smile. Her hand stopped his when they reached the squirrel's diaphragm.

"Turn it over," Maddie directed, making a turning motion with her finger. Dylan complied and Maddie picked up her knife again. She grabbed one of the forelegs of the squirrel and passed the knife to Dylan as she twisted the leg in her grip. "Cut it," she instructed. Dylan timidly put the blade to the leg and Maddie huffed out an annoyed breath. "Go on, it's dead. It ain't gonna feel anythin'."

Dylan sucked in his breath and didn't let it go until, under Maddie's careful direction, he'd severed both front limbs from the carcass. He tried not to wince when Maddie guided him through the process of pulling out the ribs and guts. He couldn't help but hold his breath again when she started telling him how to cut the saddle piece away from the remaining legs, and he let out a huge sigh of relief when he finished the final task of separating the hind legs from the backbone.

"Congratulations, city boy," Maddie said as she slid the pieces of meat into a stainless steel bowl they'd taken from the house they met in. "Ya jus' gutted yer first fuckin' squirrel." She turned the bowl in her grip, examining its contents. "Not a bad first go, either. You'll get the hang of it soon enough," she added.

"Yeah," Dylan agreed a little uneasily. He rose when Maddie did and took the bowl from her. "I'll get a fire going," he suggested. "Seems to be around lunchtime."

"I like that idea," Maddie replied. Her stomach had been growling since she'd woken up that morning. "I'm gonna head down to that little pond an' get cleaned up," she said, motioning in the direction of the pond they'd found the previous day. "I'll get these out of the way, too," she offered, collecting the bones and guts in the recently-soiled cloth.

"Please do," Dylan said.

"Pussy," Maddie teased. Dylan just smirked a little and shook his head.

"Yeah, whatever. Go wash up. You smell worse than a locker room," he replied.

"Oh, how charming," she said, batting her lashes a little mockingly. All the same, she bent down and fished in her rucksack until she came up with a bar of soap still in its box. "Keep watch, would you?" she said as she straightened herself up again. "And eyes front, soldier. I ain't had a proper bath in a while, y'know."

"My eyes are always front," Dylan scoffed as Maddie passed him by, balling up the cloth in her hands as she walked.

"Hm. Mine aren't," Maddie hummed, her eyes trailing down towards Dylan's ass.

"Hey!" he half-shouted, bringing her attention back to his face. "Stop that!"

Maddie threw her head back when she laughed. She made a point of sneaking one last peek at the boy's rear end before he said, "Come on, seriously!" and she shook her head and continued on her way, her light laughter still trailing behind her.

* * *

The silence weighed down on Milton like a heavy winter blanket. It rang in his ears, unrelenting, as his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness that came with the setting sun. The moon was quick to take its place, its ethereal glow casting strange shadows across the bare wall across from him. The only thing left to keep Milton company was the labored breathing of the man lying stone still on the mattress in front of him.

Milton still didn't know the man's name. He didn't know where he'd come from or why he'd been wandering Atlanta with torn clothes and a missing appendage. It did dawn on Milton that the man could have been bitten- Dr. Stevens noted that he presented with a fever, and drew two conclusions from this: either he had, in fact, encountered a biter and now the plague, the new piece in the crumbling puzzle of decaying humanity, was coursing through him or his hand had simply been severed and the infection was something much less threatening to them all.

"Which seems more likely?" Milton had asked her timidly. Dr. Stevens hadn't answered him right away. She had been sitting in a chair beside the bed, meticulously cleaning out the wound and hushing the man when he'd cry out and curse in pain. He kept trying to pull away from her, and had been fighting so much that Dr. Stevens had excused herself to bring in some men who tethered the man to the bed so that she could finish her work. If possible, the man fought harder after being tied down, the leather straps wound around his left wrist and his ankles barely holding onto him as he thrashed and strained against them. Milton had tried to assist by holding him down at his chest.

The man swam in and out of consciousness as the doctor worked on him. When he was out, he barely moved save for the occasional twitch, but when he was awake he fought with all the fervor of a wild animal. He was bigger than Milton, and even in his weakened state he was still stronger than the Woodbury researcher. The man wasn't all there even when his eyes were open. The blue of his irises were glazed over with pain or with panic or with fever and he just lashed out on instinct. Once, in a state of semi-lucid consciousness, the man seemed to register that the weight pressing on his chest belonged to another man. Milton had tried talking to him then, tried muttering something reassuring, and in return the man spat in his face.

When Dr. Stevens had finished her work and the man's breath had evened out in uneasy sleep, Milton posed his question again. Dr. Stevens looked at the man, whose bare chest (they'd removed his leather vest and torn, bloodied shirt to check for other injuries) rose and fell with much more effort than it should have, whose brow glistened with sweat, whose right hand had recently been replaced with a thick cushion of white gauze, and she pressed her mouth into a thin line.

"Only time can tell," she finally answered. She left Milton alone with the man, the silence pressing down on him and only broken by the occasional snore or heavy sigh coming from the still form on the bed. Just as Milton was lowering himself into Dr. Stevens' vacated chair, the door swung open and the Governor stepped in.

"Heard you picked up something extra on your run into the city," Philip said by way of greeting as the door clicked shut behind him. He nodded towards the sleeping man.

"I thought he was another biter at first," Milton explained. "Then he started talking."

Philip nodded slowly. He walked towards the bed, studying the figure there briefly.

"Dr. Stevens told me he could be infected," he went on. Milton did his best to will away the fear that was buzzing in all of his nerves.

"He's missing a hand. She said the wound was half-cauterized. She thinks he might have, uh, done it himself," Milton replied. "She said he did it sloppily, but if he hadn't tried at all he'd be dead by now."

"I was told he's running a fever," Philip said. Milton went quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he replied. "According to Dr. Stevens…well, she couldn't tell how his hand had come off with the way he'd tried to heal it. There's no way to tell if a weapon did it, or if a biter got him."

"So a conversion might happen," Philip finished for him. Milton swallowed hard, his eyes darting between the one-handed man and the Governor.

"Yes," he answered. They were quiet for a moment, and then Milton blurted, "He's strong."

Philip's eyes narrowed at him, a question asked with no need for spoken words. Milton stuttered a bit, tripping over the words he was trying to string together.

"Even with the blood loss, he put up a good fight. If…if he doesn't turn, he could be useful," Milton stammered. Philip considered this.

"If he doesn't turn, we'll test him," he decided.

Without another word, Philip left the room. He left the door slightly ajar and Milton wasn't sure if he was supposed to follow after the man or if he'd just forgotten to pull it closed. Milton shrugged off the idea that Philip wanted to be followed- it was getting late anyway, he was probably just headed home to sleep. Milton lowered himself into the chair beside the bed and resigned himself to watching the rise and fall of the nameless man's chest as he slept on, unaware of the way his fate was being tossed around in so casual a conversation it could have easily been about the weather.

Milton wasn't sure why, but his heart ached for the ailing man before him. A man whose name he didn't know, whose past he couldn't begin to fathom. He wasn't sure why he wanted this man to live so badly until a raspy voice laced with exhausted slipped past the man's lips as he slept. That voice quietly called out a name, which was first lost in a slur and then, when he pronounced it again, became as clear as the stars winking in the window- "Maddie."

Milton wanted the man to live because the man fought so hard to do so. Milton wanted him to live because he so clearly had something in this fucked up, torn up, rotting world to live for.

* * *

Since the world went to shit, it seemed that people had made a habit of going missing.

First it was Maddie Grace, and then Merle, and now a defenseless and terrified little girl.

The CDC had been a bust. As it would turn out, the only person left alive in there had been completely off his rocker. The group had barely made it out of the building before the thing went up in a hot cloud of smoke. Daryl considered taking off then, veering away from the rest of the caravan and disappearing before anybody could stop him, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. There was something in him that needed to see the whole of this rag-tag group of refugees together and alive.

After a night of restless sleep, it decided that they would all take a day to rest and regroup before continuing onward. When they did start traveling again, it smooth sailing until they hit the highway, where cars sat in an eternal gridlock, one final traffic jam that they could never escape. Daryl maneuvered his brother's bike through the haphazard graveyard of Toyotas and Volvos and Fords, a cemetery that bore license plates instead of headstones, to see if he could find a way to get the whole group to other end. When he returned, he found everyone standing around the RV- it had broken down, and even though this fact frustrated many, nobody was really surprised.

Then the herd came. The putrid stench of rotting flesh intensified as their moans and groans grew closer. Their shuffling feet carried them down the asphalt as quickly as they could, the scent of the living urging them on, and although he knew that everyone around him was reliving the events at the quarry camp in their heads, Daryl could only think about how similar this was to the day Maddie Grace went missing.

The group wasted no time in hastily diving underneath cars, biting down on their lips to stop themselves from hissing at the pain that came with scraped knuckles and gravel digging into open palms. Shaky breaths were drawn in rapid succession as the walkers ambled awkwardly on, bumping into cars and each other and speaking in a language of monosyllabic grunts. Some of them, the hungriest ones, were more keen on finding food than others and bent down to snarl at the living. When they couldn't get what they wanted, or when they were pushed on by the continuing tide of walking dead behind them, they'd either fall over and get trampled or straighten up and carry on. A few were killed because they'd gotten too close to wrong end of a survivor's bloodstained blade.

As quickly as they had come, they were gone. Their voices disappeared in the distance as they carried on their endless walk to nowhere in particular. Daryl watched as Rick slowly started to ease himself out from beneath the sedan that had shielded him. Sophia had been watching, though neither man saw her until they heard her scream.

One last fucking walker was there, a straggler, the last runner of the marathon, and it had zeroed in on the girl. Sophia scrambled to get away, but her movements, fueled by adrenaline and absolute horror, were just as awkward as the creature ambling after her.

The girl ran. Rick sprang into action, sprinting after the child and the beast while his wife held back the girl's horrified mother. Daryl saw Lori's mouth moving over words, probably offering small comforts to Carol, who was trembling in the other woman's grasp and definitely not hearing a thing.

Two people went into the woods, and only one came out.

Carol crumbled when Rick came back empty handed. That was the best way Daryl could think to describe it, she just crumbled. Had Lori not been there to catch her she definitely would have hit the ground.

Daryl's heart broke for the woman. He thought about Merle, who, even though he hadn't expressed his emotions quite so openly, had felt the same way when they'd failed to find his daughter that day nearly three weeks ago. He thought about Maddie, who was perfectly capable of surviving on her own because of the way Merle and Daryl had raised her, and he thought about Sophia, and how young and vulnerable she was.

Rick's eyes caught Daryl's. Daryl didn't need to think twice before he nodded and followed the cop over the rail and into the wilderness, Shane close behind them.

Daryl was going to find that little girl if it killed him.

And would it really be so selfish of him to keep his eyes peeled for his niece while he tracked Sophia?

* * *

Maddie wasn't all that far away from camp when she heard the call- two high whistles followed by a lower note that grew higher in pitch at its tail end. Maddie froze where she stood, her bow loaded and aimed at the spot where a rabbit had been sitting. The call had frightened the animal away, and when it sounded again a bird cawed back at it.

Maddie released the tension on her bow but kept the arrow nocked as she sprinted back towards camp. She barreled into the small clearing to find three corpses closing in on Dylan. Maddie hefted up her weapon and let her arrow fly. The arrow sliced into the skull of one of the corpses and as the thing fell to the ground with a resounding _thud_! one of the others whirled around, lifeless eyes honing in on her. It reached out for her, its jaw moving and teeth snapping at the mere anticipation of a meal.

She nocked another arrow and shot the corpse between the eyes. She only lowered her bow when she saw that Dylan had taken care of the third and final corpse, beating it down and bashing its skull in with the heel of his boot.

"We gotta fuckin' move," Maddie said immediately. "Start packin' up."

"Maddie, wait," Dylan said but he failed to catch her attention as she shouldered her bow and started grabbing at things around the camp. He said her name again as she snatched up the folded clothes they'd washed in the river yesterday and shoved them into her rucksack. She kept on going, gathering up the squirrels she'd caught in snares that neither she nor Dylan had skinned yet. She pulled the sleeping bags out of the tent and was starting to roll them up when Dylan said her name a third time, louder and more stern. "Maddie!"

"What?" she snapped, and she looked up so see a trembling form peeking out from behind Dylan. She halted in her actions as Dylan side-stepped to reveal more of the figure behind him. The girl was young, with shoulder-length blonde hair and big blue eyes. "Oh," Maddie said, her tone softer as she pulled herself away from her hasty packing and walked towards Dylan and the little girl.

"She was what those corpses were chasing," Dylan explained.

"She ain't bit, is she?" Maddie asked, glancing between the two. The little girl shook her head, eyes watering and bottom lip trembling as Maddie got closer. "Scratched?" Even as she asked the questions, Maddie's eyes were scanning over the girl, assessing her neck and her bare arms. The girl shook her head again. Maddie dropped her bow to the ground in an attempt to seem less threatening and she knelt down in front of the girl, who shied away from her a bit but kept her feet rooted to her spot. "What's yer name, kid?"

"S-Sophia," the girl stammered.

"Are you lost, Sophia?" Dylan asked, kneeling at her other side. Sophia watched warily as he lowered himself and then nodded hesitantly.

"Where'd ya come from, honey?" Maddie asked.

"My mom and I….we've got a group with us. W-we were on a highway when a whole herd of walkers came. I….I thought…I thought that they were gone, but they weren't- not all of them," Sophia explained nervously.

"Walkers, huh?" Maddie asked, testing the term on her tongue. "That's what yer people call those things?"

"Yes," Sophia replied in the smallest voice Maddie had ever heard. Dylan and Maddie looked at one another. Dylan motioned toward the tent with his head and Maddie nodded in agreement, both of them standing and straightening at the same time.

"Give us a minute to talk, okay?" Dylan said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "What do we do?" Dylan whispered once they were out of earshot.

"We can't stay here, that's for sure," Maddie replied. "We gotta keep movin'."

"So what do we with her? Take her with us?" Dylan asked. Maddie chewed at the side her thumb in thought, shrugging her shoulders.

"We can't jus' leave her here," she said.

"When she first came crashing through those trees, I thought…" Dylan trailed off and he turned to glance at Sophia. He shook his head to clear it before continuing. "I thought she was Anna."

"Yer sister?" Maddie asked even though she knew the answer. Dylan nodded, running his fingers through his hair.

"The thing is, if it was her, and she was lost out in the woods like that…if someone found Anna or Megan and could bring them back to me, I want them to, you know?"

"Yer sayin' ya want us to go to the highway? Try to find her group?"

"Those things, the walkers, they chased her here. She was running hard, and I know it could have been adrenaline, but I can't imagine that she'd been running too long. We can't be too far away from the highway," Dylan replied. Maddie's hands went to her hips as her blue eyes swept over their surroundings. "Her group's probably looking for," Dylan said, retraining her attention on him. "I would be. Maybe they'd let us stay with them. Safety in numbers, right?"

"We ain't got long 'til it's dark," Maddie said. She looked past Dylan's shoulder at Sophia. The girl couldn't have been more than twelve years old. She was stick thin and trembling all over and her wide blue eyes were trained on the pair across from her. "We'll finish packin' an' head out. However far we get, we get."

With a plan that still felt half-developed, Maddie and Dylan approached Sophia once more. The girl tried to control her shaking but fear was still apparent in her posture and her eyes.

"We're going to get you back to your group," Dylan told her with forced confidence. Sophia eyed him carefully and then she looked to Maddie, who nodded to confirm his words.

"Stick with us, kid," she said. "We'll keep ya safe."


	4. Can You Hear Heaven Cry?

**Disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters or story lines. I do own my OCs and a computer.

Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for all of your kind reviews, your favorites and your follows! It really means a lot to me and I'm so glad that you're all enjoying the story. I feel like I kind of been neglecting Merle in this so far (although in my defense he has been unconscious for most of his parts) so I tried to make his part longer in this chapter. It's also the first time you'll be hearing about Merle from Merle, and not through Milton narration. Yay! Also, sorry if there are any typos in this one, especially in the very last part- I didn't get a chance to proofread it and I wrote it at like 1AM. I just really wanted to get this chapter up before finals swallowed me whole!

Anyways, that's enough of me babbling. On with the story!

* * *

There was pain; all different kinds, in varying degrees- sharp and stabbing, dull and throbbing, aching, burning, searing- consuming his entire body.

Beads of sweat collected on his brow, but when he tried to reach up and wipe them away he found that he couldn't lift his arm. He struggled with this briefly, testing the restraints that bound him. He shifted where he laid, moving his legs as much as he could. He felt the same sort of leather bindings wrapped tight around both of his ankles. His right hand ached something awful, but no matter how many times he clenched and unclenched his fist the pain wouldn't leave him. His head was pounding. His skin burned, and he was trapped. His chest heaved, panic setting in.

When Merle finally opened his eyes he couldn't help but let out an audible hiss at the white light that assaulted them. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the brightness, and he looked around. He didn't recognize the room he was in. He couldn't remember how he'd gotten there. Merle tugged at the restraints in vain. His sore muscles could do nothing to gain his freedom back.

"Oh," came a voice. He hadn't heard anybody come in- no squeaking door hinges or footsteps; although he could have been preoccupied with swallowing down the wave of nausea that crashed into him when he attempted sitting up. "You're awake."

A woman walked up to the side of the bed. She sported a white coat that nearly blended with the paint on the walls. Merle tried to focus his vision on her but the lines of the woman's dark skinned face kept blurring and morphing until the nausea crept back and he had to turn away. He grunted when he felt a hand press against his forehead.

"Your fever seems to have gone down, but it's hard to tell with that sunburn," the woman was saying. The words sounded far away despite the small space between them. She turned away from him for a moment, and when her shadow fell over him again he felt something else settle on his head. It felt like cloth, cool and damp. Merle shut his eyes when a bit of the cloth slipped past his brow.

"Open up," he heard the woman say. He grunted at her again, tried to bat her hand away but failed because, low and behold, his restraints had not magically disappeared. She slipped what he assumed was a thermometer under his tongue. His right hand still ached, the pain throbbing all the way up his arm. He clenched his fist tight. When that made no difference, he opened his hand and stretched out his fingers, pressing his palm against the sheets. He couldn't feel the cotton beneath him. If he had his eyes open he might have caught the concern that creased his doctor's brow as his muscles flexed and contracted fitfully against the mattress.

The thermometer was taken away and he heard something scratching- a pen on paper. She was marking down his temperature. Then he heard the scrape of wood against tile. A bandage was being unraveled. Merle forced himself to open his eyes. He strained to look towards the woman who was pulling gauze off of his injured hand. The white dressing was stained with blood old and new, brown and dull and red and fresh. It was deposited in a waste basket that sat beside the doctor's chair. Her head was bent over the wound as she inspected it, and it was only when she turned to grab supplies that he saw the reason behind his inability to relieve his pain- the thing that hurt so badly did not even exist anymore.

Every exhausted muscle in Merle's body got tense. His breathing hitched. His head was pounding and he felt the nausea again and he wasn't sure if he would be able to settle it this time. When the doctor turned her attention back to him he jerked his arm away, relieved to find that they'd skipped strapping down his injured extremity. The woman let out a surprised yelp at this burst of energy. She reached out to him but Merle shoved her away with what little strength he had. He twisted against his bindings, shouted curses, and all of the movement and the yelling made all the pain worse but he couldn't stop himself from fighting because he couldn't even remember how the hell he had lost his goddamn hand in the first place.

A million questions ran through his mind, fueling the massive migraine that pulsed behind his eyes. The damp cloth that was meant to soothe his fever fell away and was on the pillow now as he continued to struggle. Sweat clung to every bit of him, making the sheets stick to his exposed back. His breathing was too fast and he could feel his heart thudding against his chest, in his throat, in his ears. His stomach churned and in the midst of everything he felt a great need to be sick but he wouldn't let himself. The restraints were rubbing his already burnt skin raw and his voice was hoarse because his throat was dry and aching but he couldn't- no, he wouldn't- stop fighting.

Soon there was a weight pressing hard against his chest and somebody was saying right into his ear, "Hey, we're trying to help you!" but he just kept straining against the hands that pinned him down.

The adrenaline began to fade. He still felt hands on his chest, fingers pressing into dark bruises that he couldn't see but didn't need to because _fuck that hurt_ and his breath came out in rasping gasps and his hand still hurt and his skin still burned and his bindings did not become any looser. He felt dizzy and disoriented and his vision was swimming, little spots dotting the plain scenery of the room, until the world simply went black.

When Merle came to, the room was dark. He was aware of another damp rag on his head. He ached everywhere, but the pain was not nearly as intense as it had been earlier. There were still leather straps confining him to the bed. He shifted in his spot, groaning as his muscles protested and his bones cracked and popped.

He squinted when the cloth was removed from his brow. Who the hell was there now? His first thought was Daryl. It wouldn't be the first time he'd woken up with his brother standing over him. Merle forced his eyes open and turned his head toward the man that was observing him quietly from a chair at his bedside. No, this man was much too small to be Daryl. Besides, no matter how many times his baby brother might have claimed to want to, he never would have resorted to strapping Merle to his bed. Merle coughed, trying to clear his throat and get the man to identify himself, but his throat was too dry and too raw to produce anything more than a frustrated huff.

"Here," the man said. He reached towards a table beside the bed and poured some water from a pitcher into a small plastic cup. "Can you sit up at all?" he asked. Merle narrowed his eyes at him and tugged at his restraints in response. "Right, those," the man said, eyes flitting downwards briefly, a silent apology, before he asked if Merle could at least lift his head a bit. Merle's pride said no, but his parched throat screamed yes and he found himself raising his head as the other man brought the cup to his lips. As he gulped at the cool water Merle silently berated himself for his own helplessness.

Merle hadn't completely drained the cup of its contents when he decided he couldn't swallow anymore of the cool, clear liquid and he let his head fall back against the pillow. He cleared his throat again and decided to test his vocal cords.

"Who're ya?" Merle rasped. His voice sounded foreign to his own ears.

"Milton," the man replied. "Milton Mamet." There was a pause, and then, "Don't suppose you remember how you got here?"

Merle closed his eyes, trying to remember. He caught little glimpses of the past few days, snapshots that didn't fit together all the way. A gun. A rooftop. Handcuffs and shouting, screaming and fighting all while the blazing sun licked at every bit of his skin. Blood. Pain. Darkness. He opened his eyes and shook his head. "No," he said quietly.

"Figured as much," Milton said. "When we found you out in Atlanta you were near bled out. Thought you were a biter at first. When we found out that you weren't, we brought you back here. Dr. Stevens has been busy trying to patch you up. She says you've got a nasty infection at the amputation site. You've been mostly unconscious for a while now. We never even got your name."

"It's Merle," he slurred.

"Merle," Milton repeated. "Do you remember how you lost your hand?"

Merle thought back again, memories pulsing through the haze of the headache that was becoming more and more prominent. The handcuffs. The hacksaw with the dull blade. His own screams echoing in his ears as he sliced through flesh and bone.

"Cut it off," Merle murmured. Before Milton had a chance to respond Merle demanded, "Where the fuck am I?"

Milton faltered for a brief moment, Merle's sudden harshness catching him off guard. He recovered quickly and stated, "Woodbury."

"Ya tie up everyone ya meet here?" he asked, pulling at the restraints again.

"Those were necessary, unfortunately," Milton answered evenly. Merle grunted and stared at the man who shrugged his shoulders and said, "You were fighting us too hard. We wouldn't have been able to help you if we didn't restrain you."

Merle snorted, cursed, and turned his head away.

"I'll talk to Dr. Stevens about removing them," Milton promised. Merle looked at him sideways.

"What's'a matter? 'fraid to take 'em off yerself?" he accused. His voice was hoarse from disuse and he had to turn away again to cough. His breathing was shallow and labored. Sweat was starting to collect on his brow. His stomach ached and he wasn't sure if it was from hunger or if his body were threatening him with nausea again. He wasn't sure if Milton even answered his question. As far as he was concerned, his words were still dangling in the air between them. His vision was fading again. All of his pain from the early hours of the day was creeping back, settling into his muscles and bones. Fatigue pulled at him from every angle. His eyelids felt heavy.

He was vaguely aware of Milton saying something before yet another cool rag was put to his brow. He heard footsteps but couldn't tell if they were coming or going. He saw spots, and in between them were images of Daryl and of Maddie Grace, swimming through the haze and looking like old photographs. He tried to call out to them, to ask them where they were, to ask them why they weren't right there, with him, instead of this strange man, but all of the words he wanted to say died on his lips.

* * *

There were bells. Maddie thought she was hearing things at first, but then Dylan and Sophia seemed to notice the sound, too. They chimed rhythmically in the distance, singing a tune that was familiar but, in the state of the world, largely forgotten.

"Think someone's ringing them?" Dylan asked.

"Gotta be," Maddie replied. Dylan glanced down at Sophia. She'd been clutching a stuffed doll close to her chest the entire time he'd known her, gripping it so tightly that her knuckles were constantly paper white. Now she twisted that doll in her hands as she nervously shifted her weight from foot to foot.

"Could be your group," Dylan said to her. A little spark of hope lit up her tired blue eyes.

"You think so?" she said softly. She looked expectantly between Maddie and Dylan. Dylan told her yes and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. Maddie gave her a small nod before turning back towards the sound.

"Let's go," she said, beginning to lead them in the direction of the bells. They'd only gotten a few paces before the ringing stopped. There were a few seconds, maybe half a minute, of echoing before the woods went quiet again. Sophia hesitated, worry clear in her expression. "Jus' keep movin'," Maddie told her, reaching out to place her hand on the girl's back. "We ain't that far from those bells. If yer group's ringin' 'em we'll be able to catch up, alrigh'?"

Sophia nodded and fell into step with Maddie as the older girl continued to guide the trio through the trees. Maddie held her bow at her side, the weight of it comforting. Dylan had his gun tucked into the back of his jeans, and every now and then he'd reach for it. He never drew his weapon, he just wanted to be sure it was still there. Sophia had Maddie's hunting knife dangling awkwardly from her belt. Maddie had given it to her that morning as they were packing up their small camp.

"Do you really think I'll need it?" Sophia had asked in her small voice when Maddie bent down to attach the knife to her belt.

"I think it's better for ya to have it an' not need it than the other way 'round," Maddie had answered matter-of-factly. The three hadn't seen a walker since they'd taken down the ones that had been pursuing Sophia the previous day, but they weren't about to take any chances. When they had failed to locate the highway and decided it was too dark to keep looking they set up a small campsite just a bit away from the riverbank. Maddie and Dylan had given Sophia full reign of the tent while they slept in shifts outside. Admittedly, none of them slept well.

They'd wasted no time in the morning. After a meager breakfast of peanut butter and saltine crackers and a few gulps of water each they were on their feet once more. Every now and again Maddie would whistle into the air; always four high, sharp notes that the summer breeze caught and carried away. At one point, when they'd stopped to rest, Dylan asked her why she kept sending out the calls.

"Habit, mostly," she'd said with a shrug. It wasn't as though it was a lie. When her daddy took her out in the woods they'd whistle back and forth all the time, practicing calls or actually putting them to use. Hell, when she was younger he would sometimes whistle to her from the driveway if she were sitting by the kitchen window with her school books while he worked on his treasured bike, just to test her. " 'Sides, ya never know who might be out there, listenin'."

Dylan's chocolate brown eyes caught Maddie's blue ones and lingered there for a few moments before he nodded his understanding. Maddie then took a few minutes to teach Sophia the distress signal she'd shown Dylan days ago. Sophia had been apprehensive about learning the call, as though knowing it might set her up to be separated from her new group, but Maddie had repeated her words from that morning- "Better to know it an' not need it than not know it at all."

Shortly after that was when they'd started to hear the bells. Now, they had been walking quite a while again. Maddie whistled her four sharp notes. Her heart leapt to her throat when the bells answered her call.

Could that be her daddy? Her uncle? Was it just one, or was it both of them? Were they waiting for her? Maddie quickened her pace, Dylan and Sophia close behind her. She zigzagged through the dense trees until there was a clear dirt path under her feet and she kept up her speed as the bells started to fade and their faint echoes took over.

"We can't be far," Maddie said over her shoulder when the echoes dissipated. Sophia seemed to pick up on her energy, an extra spring added to her step as she followed the teen. The little girl's eyes glistened with hope.

* * *

Despite the length of summer days Daryl found himself wishing for just a few more hours of sunlight. As it was, morale was low. Carol could barely hold herself together, every minute away from her daughter breaking her just a little bit more. Daryl could barely look at her for fear of blurting out something about Maddie Grace.

Back at the quarry camp, on his and Merle's first night there, he'd almost told the group about her. He'd opened his mouth to start telling the story when Merle's elbow collided with his ribs, effectively shutting him up.

"Were you gonna say something, son?" the old man, Dale, had asked him. Daryl grunted and ducked his head. Dale wouldn't let up, though, and encouraged him to talk if he wanted to, and he wound up telling his stupid chupacabra story just to get the man off his back. Later that night, when they had retreated to their tent, Daryl had asked Merle why he wouldn't just let him tell the group about Maddie.

"We don' know for sure that she's gonna show up here," Merle had said. "If we don't see 'er in a few days, we gotta move on. We don't know which way she's movin' or how far she's gettin'. I ain't gettin' stuck here, tied down to these people, an' I sure as hell don't want any'a those fuckers stickin' their noses in our business. Maddie Grace ain't theirs to worry about. She's mine."

Merle's words stuck with Daryl. He glanced behind him to make sure everyone was keeping up and immediately wished he hadn't when he saw Carol curl in on herself a little bit more. He averted his eyes. A huge part of him wanted to just tell her that he understood, that his brother's kid was out there, too, and that he empathized with her fears but then Merle's voice echoed in his brain "She's mine" and that echo kept his lips sealed. Merle never was good at sharing.

Daryl paused when he heard someone's footfalls abruptly stop. He turned around slowly to find Lori staring off in the direction that Rick, Shane and Carl had left in. Concern pulled at her features. They'd heard a gunshot go off not too long ago and the woman was worrying herself sick over it.

"Why just one gunshot?" she asked for what felt like the thousandth time but was probably only the second or third.

"Maybe they had to take out a walker," Daryl suggested gruffly. Lori rounded on him.

"Don't patronize me!" she snapped. "You know they wouldn't waste a bullet takin' out one walker. They would have done it quietly."

Daryl shrugged his shoulders. Hell, he knew she wasn't wrong, but he couldn't give her the answer she was looking for, so why bother trying? He turned back around and kept moving, thankful when he heard everybody fall into step behind him. He could still feel Lori's nervous energy. It was like her whole body was buzzing with distress and it wafted off her like a perfume.

That was when he heard the call; those four sharp whistles piercing the air.

Daryl hesitated, listening hard to see if it would come again. He hadn't imagined it, had he? He waited. Nothing. He focused a little bit harder, blocking out all other sounds, but the call didn't repeat. When he tuned back in to the world he could hear Andrea offering Carol some comforting words.

"We're all hoping and praying with you," she was saying. "For what it's worth."

What it's worth? Hoping and praying hadn't done anything for Sophia so far. It sure as hell hadn't done anything to bring Maddie Grace back. Hope couldn't track missing people through the woods. Prayers couldn't call out their names.

"I'll tell you what it's worth. Not a damn thing," Daryl snarled suddenly. Andrea and Carol were clearly taken aback and were looking at him like he'd sprouted an extra head. He scoffed. "We're gonna locate that little girl, and she's gonna be just fine," he swore with all the conviction he could muster. He shook his head and asked, "Am I the only one zen around here?" as he stalked away. "Good Lord."

He could feel Carol's eyes on his back. He turned towards her, catching her gaze for a few moments. He could see a hell of a lot of emotions flashing across them all at once- disbelief, despair, uncertainty, _hope_, gratefulness. She swiped at the tears that threatened to spill and he went back to focusing on the road.

He kept listening for that four-note call to sound once more.

It didn't come.

* * *

"This can't be the right church," Dylan said, exasperated. "It hasn't got a steeple."

"How many other fuckin' churches d'ya think are out here, Dylan?" Maddie countered. She had her eyes on the ground, scrutinizing the dirt. "An' there's tracks. Lot's of 'em. Looks like a group was here not too long ago."

Maddie pointed at the footprints she'd been studying, Dylan and Sophia crouching down on either side of her to get a better look.

"Can you tell how many people there were?" Sophia asked tentatively. Maddie furrowed her brow and shook her head, her dark hair spilling over her shoulders.

"Nah," she said. "Too many prints, all on top'a one another. All different paths, too."

She straightened up, Dylan and Sophia following suit, and plucked an arrow from the mounted quiver on her bow. Maddie nocked the arrow as she walked towards the church. Dylan slipped his gun from his waistband. Sophia, still clutching her doll with all of her might, reached one hand down towards her belt, curling her thin fingers around the hilt of Maddie's hunting knife.

"Reeks somethin' awful," Maddie said as she approached the door of the door church. The heavy wooden door was slightly ajar and the stench of decay that slipped through the sliver of space made Maddie wrinkle her nose. She pushed the door open with the toe of her boot and drew back her bowstring as she took her first careful step inside.

She lowered her bow once she saw the interior, slipping the arrow off the string and returning it to her quiver. There was no need for it there- the walkers had already been killed. Maddie turned towards Dylan, who had also lowered his weapon.

"Still think we're at the wrong place?" she asked. Without giving him a chance to answer, Maddie pressed forward, glancing at all the corpses as she passed them. She didn't see gunshot wounds on any of them. Mostly she saw gray matter seeping out from cracked skulls, soft brain tissue escaping the confines of the corpses' skeletons. They'd had their heads bashed in, or sliced in half or- what was that?

Maddie leaned into the pew where a male walker was splayed, its blood staining the wooden bench that would be its grave. It looked like it had tipped over, and the object of its demise was still lodged in its head, poking out of the temple.

Maddie reached towards it, twisting it until the rotten flesh released its hold. A crossbow bolt? Could that be right? Maddie knelt down on the pew beside the body, wiping some of the gore off the bolt. It looked familiar. How many times had she seen a bolt like that cut through the air? How many times had she helped her Uncle Daryl yank free that same bolt's brothers from the flank of some massive deer that he'd brought down?

Her heart thudded hard against her chest. Her hands shook ever so slightly as she turned the bolt over in her grip. Slowly, she forced herself to stand. She faltered for a moment when she didn't see Dylan and Sophia right away, but she was instantly calmer when she noticed that they had stopped surveying the carnage around them. They had slid into one of the few pews that was not already occupied by a dead body, their heads bowed together and hands folded in their laps.

"I'm gonna go outside," Maddie said, breaking the two away from their reverent prayers. "See if I can make sense out'a those tracks."

"Sure," Dylan said. "We'll wait here for you, okay? Sophia….she wanted to pray."

"For my mom," Sophia said softly. Maddie couldn't help the small smile that tugged at the corners of her mouth.

"Yeah, sure," she replied before turning on her heel and making her way out of the church, holding tight to the bolt that she'd found. She went back to the tracks she'd been observing before, crouching down low and creeping along the path, trying to find one set of footprints to follow. It was hard to tell one print from another with the way they all overlapped. She wracked her brain, trying to remember the print of the boots her Uncle Daryl used to wear on all those hunting excursions he went on. What did the little ridges look like, again? And how heavy were her uncle's footfalls?

She jumped at the sound of a gunshot in the distance, jolting upright and glancing around the space. Other than a few birds cawing and fluttering away from the sound, everything seemed undisturbed. She glanced back at the church. She'd left the door wide open behind her and she could still see Sophia and Dylan inside. It looked like they were talking, but whether it was about the shot or God she didn't know.

Maddie returned to her task, following one set of prints around to the back of the church where they stopped at a heavy black sound box. She sighed heavily, realization dawning on her. The bells had been a recording. She'd almost forgotten things like that had existed before the dead started walking.

Maddie glanced down at the rest of the footprints that littered the ground around her. She raised her eyes to the sky and, after letting out a breath she didn't know she was holding, she whistled those four high notes into the trees.

Her call received no answer.

She looked down at the bolt again. It could have been anyone's, really, but she was just so sure that she knew it. Maddie swung her racksack around to her front and stuffed the bolt inside for safe keeping.

She then picked out another set of tracks and followed them a few paces away from the church, where she found that the entire group of prints veered off in two separate directions. She studied them briefly, trying to figure out which one she should have her small group follow.

A twig snapped behind her.

"Dylan?" Maddie asked, turning around, expecting the boy to be walking towards her from the church. Instead, she found a young woman in a horrible state of decay, her gray skin peeling off and her split fingernails reaching out for Maddie's flesh.

Maddie's first instinct was to reach for her hunting knife, forgetting for a moment that she'd left it with Sophia. She stumbled backwards, letting out an involuntary yelp when she felt the dead flesh of the decomposing woman's fingers brush against her wrist. She hefted up her bow, bringing it down to strike the corpse across the cheek which caused it to crash the ground. When it landed with the _crunch_! of broken bones Maddie struck its temple with the heel of her boot. By then, Dylan and Sophia had rushed outside, both startled by Maddie's sudden shout.

"Maddie?" Dylan called.

"I'm fine!" Maddie answered, but her reassurance was lost in Sophia's scream.

"Walkers!" the girl cried, her voice trembling as her body started to shake. Where the first walker had come from, two more were shambling out of the wilderness, and two more after them, the small group moaning and snapping their teeth.

"Shit!" Maddie cursed, tearing an arrow free from her mounted quiver and nocking it as quickly as she could. Dylan, attempting to conserve ammo, swung one leg out to roundhouse kick the nearest walker, his foot landing square in the things face. Sophia had tore out the hunting knife but was too afraid to use it. Maddie ran towards her, getting there just seconds before one of the walkers did.

Maddie put herself between Sophia and the walker and let her arrow fly. It buried itself deep in the walker's head. She didn't even have the time to retrieve it before another walker was shuffling towards them, one of its eyes missing and its shirt torn down the front.

"Gimme the knife!" Maddie demanded, reaching behind her. As much as she didn't like leaving Sophia unarmed, she couldn't afford to waste anymore of her arrows. Sophia was quick to press the knife into Maddie's palm and the girl brought it down on the walker's head, the force of the blow bringing her to the ground with it.

A scream pierced the air as Maddie's knee collided with the hard ground. She spun around, breathing heavy and eyes wild.

"Ya okay?" she asked Sophia between ragged breaths. The girl was trembling all over and her feet were rooted to her spot. Her eyes weren't on Maddie at all, but past her. Maddie followed her gaze and- "_No_!" Maddie shouted, her throat tight.

Dylan was on the ground, the final walker bent over him.

There was blood trickling down the thing's rotten chin.

Maddie pushed herself up, loading her bow as she did. Her arrow arced through the air and caught the walker in the head, tipping it over. Legs wobbly and right knee aching, Maddie raced toward her fallen friend. The rush of air created by her swift motion shocked Sophia out of her stupor and sent the girl after her. Maddie slid to the dirt when she got close enough, her bow and her knife falling from her grip as she reached for Dylan's hand, saying his name over and over again. Behind her, Sophia was in tears.

The bite was on Dylan's neck. A huge chunk of flesh had been torn away, leaving behind the stringy ends of muscles. Maddie could see pearl white bone beyond that. Warm blood fled the scene, soaking the grass beneath Dylan. His eyes were open wide and he was staring up the clouds.

His arm twitched. He raised it feebly, the weight of the gun still in his grip making the movement all the more difficult.

"Take…it," he croaked.

"W-what?" Maddie stammered. Dylan thrust the gun towards her.

"Take it," he repeated, stronger. Maddie let out a shaky breath and curled her fingers around the gun, slipping it out of his hand. After a few seconds of searching his eyes found hers.

Sophia's breath hitched as sobs wracked her tiny frame. Maddie could feel the little girl shaking behind her but she just couldn't tear her gaze away from Dylan's face. She could practically feel his life force drifting out of his body, bit by bit, every agonizing breath bringing him one step closer to death.

Maddie laced her fingers with Dylan's, his blood staining both their hands.

"Thank….Thank you," Dylan wheezed, using every bit of effort he had left.

Another breath. A rattling deep in his chest. Another drop of blood splashing another blade of grass. He turned his eyes away from her.

The very last thing he saw was the blazing, burning sun.


	5. Dixons Don't Cry

**Disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters or story lines. I do own my OCs and a computer.

Once again, a huge thanks to everyone who is reading, reviewing, and adding this story to their alerts and favorites. You guys are awesome! My finals are over so I celebrated by writing this chapter. Sorry in advance for typos- because I wrote this in a day, I wanted to just get it up and therefore didn't get to proofread in as much depth as I normally do.

Hope you enjoy, and remember that reviews make me writer faster!

* * *

Dixons don't cry. That's what her daddy had said.

She'd been six years old then. It was early summer, when the air wasn't too sticky and the gnats weren't too hungry and the sun stuck around until eight o'clock at night. Her daddy loved that time of year. He loved to sit out on the porch with a cold beer in his hand and the radio pumping out music that she was probably too young to be hearing. She knew all the words anyway, even if she didn't understand what they meant.

They were sitting on the porch together that day, early in the evening when the sky was still pale blue. Merle was in his usual chair, casually sipping at his beer while he hummed in time with Lemmy Kilmister's gravelly vocals. Maddie was sprawled out by his feet, absently picking at the peeling paint on the wooden boards beneath her. She'd looked up when she heard the rumble of an engine and sprang to her feet when her uncle Daryl had pulled into the driveway in his old, rusted pickup. He'd waved her over as he got out of the truck and, magnetically drawn by her own curiosity, she'd raced toward him.

"Got somethin' for ya," he'd said. "Was gonna wait 'til yer birthday, but I figured ya'd want ta have it now."

That something had been a bicycle, just the right size for Maddie Grace. He'd found it on a rusted chain outside the deli near the construction site he'd been working at. He'd watched it for a few days, and then a couple of weeks, and after it had been sitting there for a whole month with no one coming to claim it he'd cut it away from the bike rack and threw it in the back of his truck. Maddie was thrilled. She'd bounced excitedly around it, not caring about the faded pink paint or the dirt that looked too caked on to ever be scrubbed away completely.

"Can I ride it now?" she'd asked. "Can I, can I, can I?"

Daryl had laughed, ruffling her hair and nodding towards Merle as the eldest Dixon made his way over from the rickety porch.

"Should ask yer daddy that, huh?" Daryl said. Maddie turned her attention to her father, still buzzing with excitement.

"Can I ride it, Daddy? Can I, please?" she begged, earning a gruff laugh from her father and a satisfied smirk from her uncle. Merle sighed and shrugged.

"Don't see why not, baby," he said. "But ya gotta be careful, now, ya hear?"

"I will, I will, I will!" Maddie exclaimed. Daryl was the one to laugh, then, as the little girl's full attention turned back to him and the bicycle. He tapped on the seat, beckoning her over.

"Put this on first, alrigh'?" he'd said, leaving no room for protest as he settled a small, white helmet on her head and fastened it at her chin. " 'Kay now, hop on," he said when he was finished. He'd helped her get situated on the seat of bike and held it still while she adjusted her tiny, sneakered feet on the pedals. Her heart leapt when the bike teetered ever so slightly under her weight.

"Hold on to 'er now, little brother," Merle ordered before taking a swig of beer.

"I got 'er," Daryl promised. "Right, Maddie Grace?"

"Let's go!" Maddie said excitedly, ignoring her uncle's question. Daryl shook his head as he put one hand over hers on the right handlebar and grabbed onto the back of the seat.

"Alrigh', but I ain't doin' all the work, girlie," he'd laughed. "Ya gotta pedal yer feet, okay? Yeah, jus' like that. Atta girl, keep it up."

Daryl had guided her down the gravel driveway and helped her up and down the street a few times, Merle watching them from the lawn and calling out to them when they'd pass by. After a while, Maddie had started to insist that "I can do it myself, Uncle Daryl, I can!"

He'd made her stop moving right in front of the house, looking questioningly at his brother.

"What d'ya think, Merle?" he asked over Maddie's pestering. The corners of Merle's mouth had twitched into a smile as he watched the little girl who had inherited his eyes and his stubborn nature babble on about how she'd be just fine on her own.

"Hell, let 'er give it a go," he'd said. "She's catchin' on quick."

"Ya sure?" Daryl had asked.

"He said yes, Uncle Daryl! Ya heard 'im say yes!" Maddie insisted. Merle nodded his approval and Daryl shrugged.

"Alright. C'mon, Maddie Grace," he said. He'd held onto her like he had been while she turned the bike around, and hovered as she started down the street. "Gonna let go, now," he'd warned.

"Okay!" she'd said excitedly. Daryl pulled his hands away, slowing his pace as Maddie pedaled her new bike by herself. She wavered a little at first, but righted herself quickly and Daryl clapped his hands together as he watched her. "There ya go!"

"You got it, baby girl!" Merle called, moving to stand closer to his brother.

"Turn around now, Mads," Daryl instructed. That's where things went wrong. She hadn't figured out how to turn the bike on her own yet. When she tried, she'd wound up leaning too far over to the right. The bike, without the luxury of training wheels, swayed, the front tire getting caught and the back still spinning along the pavement. Maddie crashed to the ground, somersaulting on the asphalt and landing in a tangled heap of limbs and metal as the bike toppled over.

Daryl and Merle were there before she'd even registered what had happened, the older of the two dropping his beer bottle in his haste to get to his daughter. Daryl reached her first and pulled the bicycle away as Merle got down on his knee beside her. She trembled as her daddy dusted her off and checked her over. Her bottom lip quivered and she could feel the first tears pricking at her eyes.

"Stop that, now," Merle had said in that gruff way of his. Maddie had jumped at his tone, a whimper escaping from the back of her throat. "Dixons don't cry, girlie," he'd explained. Maddie had started to worry her lower lip. She'd glanced at her uncle and he'd nodded back to her.

She'd swallowed hard past the ever-growing lump in her throat and swiped at her eyes as though she could force the tears back. She winced a little when his rough, calloused hands brushed over blooming bruises and new, bleeding cuts. She couldn't let the little yelp of pain that came when he pressed down on her swelling wrist. She'd heard a snap there when she'd thrown her hands out in a vain attempt to catch her own fall.

"Start up the truck," Merle had mumbled to Daryl. The red of the setting sun was seeping into the sky as they drove off towards the emergency room, leaving the bicycle on the lawn and shards of Merle's broken beer bottle in the street. Daryl had driven while Merle cradled his daughter in his arms. Every time she whimpered or sniffled or went to wipe at her eyes, he'd brush his lips against her temple and whisper in her ear, "Shh, baby girl. Dixons don't cry."

* * *

Carl had been shot.

As if they didn't have enough shit to worry about. Now, Lori'd gone off with some girl on a horse and Dale was giving the whole group hell for letting her go and Carol was still distraught because Sophia was still missing and fuck, what Daryl wouldn't give for a fucking shot of whiskey. A few times he'd looked longingly at his brother's Triumph, wondering if it would be so bad for him to ride off and leave this tattered, broken group behind. The idea was dismissed almost as soon as it had come. One soft sob from Carol was enough to chase it away, sending the rest of his "get me the fuck out" thoughts scurrying after it. That woman's daughter was still out there in the woods, scared and alone and, yes, as far as Daryl Dixon was concerned, alive. They'd find her. _He'd _find her.

Glenn and T-Dog had gone ahead to find the farm, taking with them the last of Merle's stash as a peace offering to the family who owned it. Daryl had shown T-Dog exactly what to take to keep him going before they found someone who could patch up the gash on his arm. He didn't have time to explain anything beyond that. He figured that girl's family could sort through it all anyway.

When the sky turned a dark navy blue, Dale had suggested that Carol try to rest. Daryl had snorted at the thought- when your kid's missing, you don't _rest_. Merle had been fitful every night since they lost Maddie Grace. He'd fall asleep only to jerk back awake twenty or thirty minutes later panting and muttering and calling her name. Sometimes he'd stare blankly at the ceiling of their tent or up at the glistening stars and he'd just stay that way for hours until eventually he'd shift or roll onto his side or just push himself up and away from his cot to take on another day of searching.

Maybe that was why Merle had snuck some crack into his pocket before leaving for Atlanta that day. Maybe he'd just wanted to feel something that wasn't loss or regret or frustration. Maybe he thought he'd ride the high, because the low, this time, was too low to crawl out of on his own.

Now, Daryl found himself on the floor of the RV, fiddling with a bolt from his crossbow and ticking off his problems on his fingers- Maddie Grace was missing. Merle was missing. Sophia was missing. Carl was shot. The group was split up.

The only sounds echoing in the Winnebago were Dale's footfalls as he paced the roof over Daryl's head and Carol's soft crying from the bed mere feet away. With every step and every sniffle Daryl's mind produced a new problem, something else to worry about. Eventually he gave up on counting. He just twirled the bolt around his fingers and listened until he could not longer take the tears of the mother mourning the uncertain fate of her daughter or the impatient pacing of the old man on watch.

Daryl pushed himself to his feet, walking over to where Andrea was seated at the table, carefully disassembling and reassembling Daryl's own gun. He slipped the strap of his crossbow over his head. Andrea watched him curiously, a question in her eyes.

"I'm gonna walk the road," he explained, tugging his weapon out of her hands. "Look fer the girl."

"I'm coming, too" Andrea decided after a moment, getting to her feet before he could tell her no. He looked towards Carol instead, met her watery, questioning eyes and gave her a curt nod before following the blonde out of the RV. They moved quietly together with flashlights in their hands. Every now and then Andrea would call out for Sophia in a hushed tone. Daryl tried to do so a few times, but it was always Maddie's name that landed on his tongue and he'd had to catch himself every time.

"I gotta ask you something," Andrea said eventually. Daryl grunted in response. "Do you really think we'll find her?"

"Ya got that look on yer face jus' like everybody else," Daryl snorted. "The hell's wrong with you people? We jus' started lookin'."

"Well?" Andrea pressed. "Do you?"

"It ain't the mountains 'a Tibet. It's Georgia" Daryl scoffed. "She's prob'ly holed up in a farmhouse somewhere. People get lost, they survive-" Like Maddie. Like Merle. "-happens all the time."

"She's only twelve," Andrea argued. And Maddie Grace was only seventeen, but that didn't mean she was dead in the woods. Daryl knew that they were both alive, Maddie and Sophia, fighting for their own survival, and it was only a matter of time before they'd cross paths with the group again. He huffed, agitated at Andrea's refusal to believe that Sophia was still okay.

A huge part of him burned to just tell the woman about his niece. He wanted to see the look on her face when she realized that his hunt for Sophia was not entirely selfless. He wanted her to understand that he needed Sophia to come back alive, because she had a whole search party looking for her every chance they got and that was more of a chance than Daryl and Merle had ever given Maddie Grace.

He found himself getting angry at his brother for refusing to tell anybody else about the youngest Dixon. If they'd told the group, would she back with them already? Would the others have helped them locate her faster? Would Merle have still lost his hand on that rooftop? Would the three of them be off somewhere together, hunting for food and defending themselves the way they'd been doing before?

When he and Merle had gotten to that old tree to find a crude "M" carved into the bark, Daryl had done everything he could to keep himself calm while his brother raged. He remembered Merle starting to pace the way he always did when his emotions ran too fast for his brain to keep up.

"Fuckin' stop that," Daryl had snarled, his own thoughts running in an endless loop of what-ifs. "Yer messin' up 'er trail."

That had caught his brother's attention. They'd busied themselves with following footprints to another tree that had another "M" cut into it.

"There's another set 'a prints here," Merle had growled. "Ain't walkin' right, either."

"Looks like she veered off the path," Daryl observed. "Fucker must'a snuck up on 'er."

He hadn't been sure that Merle was listening. His brother was crouched low, scrutinizing the new prints. He followed it until a carpet of fallen leaves cut it off. Another growl rose from his throat as he straightened himself up and swiped at his nose with the back of his hand. Daryl had come to his side. Merle's hold body had been tense. His breathing was fast, and Daryl could practically hear his heart it was beating so hard. Merle wouldn't meet his eyes.

Merle didn't come back to himself until they found a corpse lying face down with a puncture wound in the back of its head and an "M" cut haphazardly into its fraying, dirty flannel shirt about a mile off the beaten trail. They'd pressed on, trying to pursue her further, but it she'd hit a grassy patch that didn't hold fast to her prints. They'd found the quarry camp not long after that. Daryl had rode up in the truck first, Merle following behind him on his Triumph. Before they'd gone to speak to anyone Merle had pinned his brother against the side of the truck and hissed.

"We don't tell these people our business, ya hear? Don't git involved wit' their shit, an' don't let them fuck up ours."

Merle wasn't there right now. And they were out searching for Sophia, anyway. What would be the harm in letting Andrea in on the secret?

"_Maddie Grace ain't theirs to worry about._" Merle's voice resounded in Daryl's head. "_She's mine_."

Daryl snorted, shook his head to get his hair out of his eyes, and just like at the quarry, he'd resigned himself for substituting an older story in place of Maddie Grace's. He told her about his own experience being lost in the woods, and he'd been especially wary of poison oak ever since.

"That is a terrible story," Andrea couldn't help but laugh. Daryl simply shrugged.

"Well, difference is, Sophia's got people lookin' for 'er," he stated. She had a whole group wanting to find her, unlike Maddie Grace who'd gotten stuck with only himself and Merle. Unlike himself, who'd had no one back then. He shrugged again. "Figure that gives 'er a chance."

* * *

Maddie sat in the grass outside of the old farmhouse, her back pressed against the wall, her rucksack lying half-open beside her. In her hand she held the bolt she'd found in the church the day before. She stared blankly ahead as she twirled the thing between her fingers. There was still blood on her hands- Dylan's blood. She hadn't been able to wash it all away.

She stiffened when she heard the creak of the door, her free hand reaching for the gun at her side as she turned towards the sound. She relaxed when she saw Sophia step tentatively into the sunlight.

"Mornin', kid," Maddie greeted after clearing her throat.

"Mornin'," Sophia replied softly.

"Ya sleep at all?" Sophia shook her head. She made her way down the stone steps and settled in the dewy grass beside the older girl.

"I couldn't get it out of my head," Sophia said. "Dylan," she explained when Maddie met her eyes. Maddie nodded, blinked and swallowed past the building lump in her throat.

"Me, too," she admitted. She turned her attention back to the arrow, passing it from one hand to the other, trying to force it to distract herself from the image of Dylan in a pool of his own blood. No matter how hard she tried she couldn't shake the picture from her brain. His dying words were still an aching whisper that wouldn't stop ringing in her ears. She inhaled deeply.

"In my Father's house there are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you," Maddie quoted carefully. "I am going there to prepare a place fer you. An' if I go an' prepare a place fer you, I will come back an' take you to be with me that you also may be where I am." She met Sophia's eyes again, smiling a little at the way the girl's brow furrowed. "John, chapter fourteen, verses two and three. My, uh…My daddy said it when Gran'ma Jane passed away. She wasn't my real granny or nothin', but she lived next door ta us. Used'ta babysit me when I was little." She laughed sadly. "Funny, what things wind up stickin' in yer head."

"When my grandma died my mom read from Matthew at her funeral," Sophia recounted.

"Blessed are those who mourn," Maddie quoted as she stood, dropping the bolt into her rucksack before swinging the bag over her shoulder. Sophia rose with her.

"For they will be comforted," the two girls finished together. Maddie put her hand on Sophia's shoulder and gave her a reassuring squeeze.

"Matthew, chapter 5, right?" she said. Sophia nodded her head, twisting her doll in her hands.

"Yeah, that sounds right," she confirmed. "The Beatitudes."

"Right," Maddie nodded. "Alrigh', since yer up, we should get a move on, huh? Go on in, grab yer pack. Seems like stayin' in the woods 'a bust. Think we'll be able ta find our way back to the road today. We'll double back, follow the trails, find our way."

"Okay," Sophia replied, hugging her doll to her chest as she climbed the steps again. She stopped at the door, her hand on the doorframe. "Maddie? D'you think we're gonna find my mom? Really?"

Maddie sighed heavily, dropping her eyes for a brief moment before looking up to scan the area. Her attention was drawn to the white flowers in the bushes across from her. A smile tugged at her lips.

"Ya see those?" Maddie said, pointing towards the blooming roses.

"Yes," Sophia answered softly.

"My uncle told me about 'em," Maddie continued. "Said they're called Cherokee Roses. They got a story behind 'em, an' that's that when the Cherokee people were walkin' the Trail of Tears, the mothers were all upset 'cuz they were losin' their kids. The elders prayed fer a sign ta lift their spirits, an' those flowers started bloomin' where the mothers' tears fell."

Maddie turned back towards Sophia, enjoying the way the younger girl's eyes lit up at the tale. Sophia then chewed at her lower lip.

"You…you think they bloomed for me?" she asked in that tiny voice of hers.

"Yeah, girlie," Maddie replied. She walked across the lawn and plucked a flower from the bunch. She took a brief moment to admire it before looking back to Sophia. "I think they did."

* * *

Merle sat on the edge of the bed, brows knitted together in concentration as he attempted to do up the buttons on his shirt with his remaining hand. He'd been in and out of consciousness for a few days now, having only a handful of lucid memories to account for his time spent in Woodbury's makeshift hospital. He always seemed to have headaches, but those were finally starting to fade away, along with the nausea and bouts of vomiting that came first of their own accord and then only when someone tried to force food into him.

Dr. Stevens, whose name he'd only finally learned in the past day or two, had hooked him up to an IV line and started him on a saline drip to keep him hydrated. Another IV had been inserted for a glucose drip, which was used sparingly to control his hunger while he still too weak to eat. She wanted to retire it officially when they started giving him real foods, but because he'd been vomiting nearly everything he ingested, it was decided that he'd keep the glucose line until his stomach stopped rejecting food.

His restraints had been removed at Milton's request, and Dr. Stevens' approval, the day after his initial conversation with the research scientist. The skin of his ankles and left wrist was still healing- all of his struggling against the leather bindings had left it red and raw and, in some small spots, bleeding- but it felt damn good to be able to move freely again. He'd deny it until the day he died, but sometimes he still had nightmares about those fucking straps holding him down. In his dreams, he'd fight hard against them, willing them to snap and set him free, but they'd only coil tighter around his joints like boa constrictors and a gleaming surgeon's scalpel would beckon him from across the room and he'd reach for it only to find that his right hand couldn't save him because it simply wasn't there.

His fever had finally broken, and all that was left of his harsh sunburn was peeling skin and a few patches of lingering red. There was no longer puss to clean from his stitched wound where his hand used to be. Dr. Stevens had stopped wrapping gauze around his arm, saying that she wanted to give the wound time to breathe. He suspected she was really just trying to conserve supplies.

And yes, there were still stitches over the bits of the wound that Merle had been unsuccessful in his emergency cauterization. Dr. Stevens had said that they weren't ready to be removed yet, and whenever he'd ask (which was whenever he was awake) she'd simply reply "Soon."

Merle had lost a considerable amount of weight since that day in Atlanta. His own clothes, the salvageable parts of which had been washed for him (his torn shirt had been a lost cause, and instead of repairing it someone had cut it into pieces to use as cloth) were loose over his new, smaller frame. Replacement clothing had been given to him- who or where they'd come from he had no idea. He just knew that one day a young woman who had been a nurse before the dead took over the Earth came into his room with folded, freshly laundered clothes that she set on a chair in the corner of the room.

"For when you're ready to be up and about," she'd explained sweetly. He'd slurred some kind of flirtatious comment at her that made her cheeks go red before she politely excused herself and ducked out of the room. He wished he'd remembered what he'd said to make her blush so hard- the girl wasn't bad to look at, and he wouldn't mind having a little fun with her if he ever found the chance.

When Merle had woken up that morning to hear Dr. Stevens declare him fit to walk around a bit, he'd practically shot out of bed. After being disconnected from his IV drops, which left a dark bruise in the crook of his arm, he'd managed to get his pants on, fly zipped and buttoned with hardly any trouble. Shrugging into an old wife beater was easy enough. Lacing up his boots had proved to be a hassle, and a few times he'd accidently reached out his right arm to assist his left hand because he could still feel his other hand there, regardless of its inexistence. It had been a slow process, but he'd gotten the job done.

The most difficult challenge turned out to be the tiny buttons on the damn button down shirt they'd left for him. Who the fuck even gave a one-handed man a button down shirt? He was still wrestling with them when he heard a soft knock at the door.

"Yeah?" he grunted. He heard the door creak open and glanced over his shoulder to see Milton stepping in. The man had been there practically every day, checking up on him, making notes about his progress, mentioning some "governor" now and again.

"What? Y'all got Arnold holed up here, too? Snag 'im from Cali, promise 'im he could be president?" Merle had muttered snarkily the first time Milton had ever mentioned the otherwise nameless head of Woodbury.

"Not exactly," Milton had replied. Milton had been mentioning this Governor character more frequently lately, telling Merle that the man wanted to meet him when he was feeling up to it.

"Nice to see you out of bed," Milton said by way of greeting. Merle snorted.

" 'Bout fuckin' time," he murmured, letting the buttons he was trying to fasten fall from his grasp for the umpteenth time. Fuck it, he was presentable enough. Judging by how long he'd been out, enough people had seen him in various states of undress anyway.

"I, uh, I have something for you," Milton stammered. Merle raised his eyebrows in question as Milton produced some strange metal contraption from behind his back. "We, um, well, we couldn't get you a real prosthesis, given the state of things, but, uh, we thought you might want…something."

Merle grunted and reached out to take the thing from Milton. He examined it briefly before sliding it over the angry scar tissue that marked his wrist had once met his hand. He tugged at the straps, keeping the prosthetic relatively loose so that he wouldn't irritate his stitches. When he had it fastened on his arm he pulled it away to admire his own handiwork.

"Thanks," he said gruffly.

"Don't mention it," Milton replied. "So…I was thinking, since you're getting back on feet, you should see a bit of the town."

Merle simply snorted. He wanted to get the hell out of there as quickly as possible. Granted, given the fact that he couldn't even hold down the fucking apple that little nurse had given him that morning, it didn't seem that leaving immediately would be an option. He figured he could milk his time in this little infirmary for all it was worth, get his strength back, and then slip away to find Daryl and Maddie Grace.

A tour of the place wouldn't kill him, anyway. If anything it would get him some goddamn fresh air and let him stretch his legs. He sighed and heaved himself off the bed. His legs weren't used to carrying his weight after his body had been bedridden so suddenly and for so long. Milton moved to steady him, but Merle grunted and waved him off.

" M'fine," he mumbled, wavering with his first painstakingly slow steps. Milton tried to offer help once more, but Merle growled at him and pressed his palm against the wall for support instead. "Don't fuckin' need help," he huffed. Milton held his hands up in defense.

"Okay, okay, fine," he said. Merle was steady enough soon, and together they made their way down the hall. The effort to climb down the stairs left Merle winded and breathless, but once again he'd waved off any and all of Milton's attempts to assist him. Soon enough they were on the street, the sticky summer air oddly refreshing when compared to the stuffiness of the hospital that was really an overly-sterilized town house.

"So," Merle said, looking around. The place seemed so…normal. There were two kids chasing each other around a tree, their shrill laughter piercing the air as one tackled the other. A man was jogging down the sidewalk with a dog trotting along beside him. Two women stood at the corner of the street gossiping intensely and occasionally calling out to the children who were now wrestling in the grass across the street. "This is Woodbury."

"This is Woodbury," Milton confirmed.

* * *

Maddie and Sophia made it to the highway by mid-afternoon.

Their packs were heavy on their backs, and Maddie had kept Dylan's gun tucked into the waistband of her jeans. She thankfully had not needed to use it yet. Once again she'd left her hunting knife in Sophia's care, and the weapon hung from the younger girl's belt like it had the day before- it suited her more now that her skin and clothes were just as dirty and grimy as its cheap sheath and hilt. Maddie had a few squirrels dangling from her belt- she'd shot them down while they trekked through the woods, but hadn't wanted to stop to clean or gut them.

"We still got yer mama ta find, remember?" she'd told Sophia, poking at the Cherokee Rose that was tucked behind the girl's ear. "We'll stew 'em up later on, alrigh'?"

Maddie's bow was slung over her shoulder. Sophia had her doll tucked under one arm while she fished in her pack- which used to be Dylan's- for a water bottle with the other. She had just found it when Maddie tapped her shoulder.

"Look," she said, pointing ahead of them. A traffic snarl. An endless gridlock. Sophia looked excitedly at Maddie before bolting towards the cars, backpack awkwardly thudding against her small back. Maddie laughed and chased after her, the weight of everything on her person slowing her down while the sight of a thrilled and hopeful Sophia urged her forward.

When Sophia's sneakered feet hit the pavement, she stopped. Maddie nearly slammed into her the girl had halted so abruptly.

"Don't lose steam on me now, kiddo," Maddie admonished, catching her breath. She reached over to take the water bottle from Sophia's hand, taking a swig from it before capping it and passing it back to Sophia. It was then that she saw exactly how the younger girl's face had fallen. "Sophia? Somethin' wrong?"

"The RV isn't there," Sophia practically whispered.

"What RV, honey? What're ya talkin' about?"

"Dale's RV," Sophia explained, although it wasn't really an explanation since Maddie had no clue who on Earth Dale was. Sophia's voice got increasingly more worried as she went on. "I-It isn't there anymore. What if they left? Do you think they might've left?"

"Easy there, 'Phia," Maddie said, putting her hand on Sophia's shoulder to calm her. "Relax, alrigh'? C'mon, let's jus' go slow."

Maddie urged Sophia forward, the two of them weaving between the many cars together. Sophia seemed panicked, and Maddie just kept on squeezing her shoulder to try to offer some kind of comfort.

"Hey," Maddie said in a hushed tone after a while of zigzagging through the many abandoned vehicles. She nodded ahead of them. "Stick close. Looks like we got company."

The company she referred to was three figures standing over an old car up ahead. One of them, the biggest of the three, was limping heavily, and the other two smaller figures were quite still. One leaned against the hood of the car while the other stood close by. Their heads were bowed together. It looked like they were discussing something.

Maddie slipped her bow off her shoulder and loaded it, unsure if their guests were human or walker from the distance at which she stood. There didn't seem to be a corpselike quality to them, but she was still shaken by their walker encounter the day before. She wasn't about to take any chances.

"Just in case," Maddie assured Sophia as she drew the bowstring back. They pressed forward, even slower now, as one of the small figures stepped away from the car. Its gait seemed human. Maddie heard Sophia whisper something, but the little girl was so quiet she couldn't make out what the word was supposed to be. "What'd ya say?" Maddie asked. Sophia was silent. " 'Phia?"

"Mom?" Sophia said, audibly this time.

"What?" Maddie asked.

Sophia didn't answer, she just quickened her pace and called out, "Mom!" before she took off running towards the figure that was still leaning against the hood of the old brown car. Maddie stiffened, her muscles tightening as she kept her bow drawn, the string pressed against her mouth. "Mom!" Sophia shouted again, still running, and the three unknown figures all paused and looked at her like they were seeing a damn ghost.

"S-Sophia?" the woman by the car stammered, finally stepping away from the vehicle. One hand fluttered up to cover her mouth. "Sophia!"

"Mommy!" Sophia shouted, leaping into her mother's waiting arms. Maddie was close enough now to see everyone's faces. She watched Sophia's mother fold the girl into her embrace, not caring about the cumbersome backpack clinging to her daughter. The other woman, a blonde, had both hands clapped over her mouth as she watched them. Her blue eyes were glistening with a hundred different emotions. The final figure, the only man, looked just as shocked as he, too, watched the reunion in front of him.

Maddie released the tension on her bowstring and allowed herself a small smile as Sophia and her mother cried into each other's shirts, their hands constantly moving over one another's backs as if they were trying to be sure that the person in their arms was actually real.

"I'll be damned," the man breathed. Then he noticed Maddie. "And who're you?" he asked evenly. Maddie jumped a little at being spotted, almost forgetting that she'd left herself with no cover. Sophia pulled away from her mother just slightly, following the man's gaze.

"That's Maddie," she said softly.

"Maddie," the man said.

"You brought my daughter back," Sophia's mother said, wiping her tears away with one hand while her other arm stayed slung over Sophia's shoulders. She pressed a kiss against her daughter's temple, but her blue eyes were fixed on Maddie's. "Thank you."

Maddie wasn't sure what she should say, so she simply nodded. Sophia smiled at her, snuggling into her mother's embrace.

"Are you alone, Maddie?" the second woman asked. Maddie turned her attention to the blonde.

" 'Cept fer Sophia, yeah," she replied.

"How old are you, sweetheart?" the blonde pressed. The Dixon in Maddie growled "_don't 'sweetheart'_ _me_", but she figured that would probably spoil the sweet moment that was Sophia's reunion with her mother, so she swallowed the words and simply told the woman that she was seventeen.

"She should come back with us," Sophia's mother said. The blonde looked from her to the man, who thought about it for a moment before nodding. "Hershel should look them both over, right?

"Yeah, I'd say so," he said, looking Maddie over. "C'mon. Let's head back." He started leading the way back to wherever it was their group had settled, calling over his shoulder, "I'm Shane, by the way."

"Andrea," the blonde said, touching Maddie's shoulder as she passed to follow after Shane.

"Carol," Sophia's mother finally introduced, holding out her hand. Maddie shook it and then allowed Carol and Sophia to go ahead of her. Carol kept her arm tight around her daughter's slender shoulders, and as they walked she pressed a kiss to the top of Sophia's head. "I was so worried," she whispered. As they continued walking, Carol told Sophia about the farm that the group was staying at and the kindly family that lived there.

Maddie's heart felt heavy as she followed behind the mother and daughter. As happy as she was for Sophia, she couldn't hold back her jealousy. How long would be before she could throw herself into her father's arms like that? Her uncle's?

For the second time that day, Maddie Grace swallowed hard past the lump forming at the base of her throat. She swiped at her eyes just to be sure they were still dry. Her father's voice echoed in the recesses of her brain.

Dixon's don't cry.


	6. You Can Always Be Found

**Disclaimer: **I do not own The Walking Dead or any of its characters or story lines. I do own my OCs and a computer.

It has been way, way, way too long since I've updated this fic! I'm really sorry about that, by the way. I had a whole bunch of real life stuff going on. Job orientations, a vacation, a sinus infection, family gatherings and the like. I also had writer's block for a while. I know that you've all been waiting for this little Dixon reunion, and I just really wanted to make it great for you guys and I had trouble with it. Eventually the characters just sort of took over for me (thankfully!), so I really hope you guys enjoy what they did with it. I did the best that I could!

Also, thank you so much for all your kind words and your dedication to this story. It really means a lot. Please and read and review and, most importantly, enjoy! Also I'm sorry for typos, especially in Daryl's part. It's 2AM. Bear with me.

* * *

It had been a few days since Merle's first walk around Woodbury with Milton. That one walk had brought back pain in his knee where a large bruise was turning yellow in preparation to fade away. It had exhausted his body, and even though he hadn't planned on it or wanted to, when he returned to his room after touring the town, he'd collapsed onto the bed and passed out cold. He woke up the next morning to find that someone had removed the metal prosthetic he'd neglected to take off himself. Whoever did it left the prosthesis on the bedside table next to a small bowl of carrots and snap peas and a cup of water. His IV lines had yet to be reinserted.

Merle only managed to eat half of the vegetables in the bowl, but he didn't feel nauseous afterwards and that was enough to satisfy him for the time being. Dr. Stevens came in around noon to check his stitches.

"They ready ta come out yet, Doc?" Merle inquired impatiently. The doctor pursed her lips and shook her head.

"Not quite," she answered. Merle grunted and tore his arm away from her inspecting hands. She shrugged her shoulders and said, "Give it time, Merle."

"Don't got time ta give," Merle retorted. Dr. Stevens refused to argue with him. She simply asked him to try to eat the rest of the food that had been left for him before excusing herself. Out of spite, he left the remaining vegetables untouched. The minute the door closed behind the doctor, Merle swung his legs over the edge of the bed and swiped the makeshift prosthetic off the table, fastening it to his arm as he limped out of the room.

The people in Woodbury seemed to know each other well enough to know when somebody didn't belong. Merle had generally been ignored when he was with Milton- he'd earned himself a few curious stares from children, and some passing glances from adults, but in general the people were just so used to Milton that they paid no mind to the rough-looking, one-handed man beside him. On his own, Merle stuck out like a sore thumb.

The Woodbury folk didn't bother him much, just stared too openly for his liking. Their eyes went to the metal contraption on his arm. They whispered to one another. In response, he squared his shoulders and set his jaw and growled at anyone who dared to meet his eyes. But when he rounded the corner, he faltered. There was a young woman standing at the other end of the street with dark hair that cascaded down her back, frizzy and curled at the ends thanks to the humidity of the summer air. She had her back to Merle as she chatted with a boy who couldn't have been more than twenty years old, if that. The boy said something to the girl and she snorted and laughed and shoved him playfully.

"Maddie Grace?" Merle whispered to himself. The boy at the end of the block raised his eyes, suddenly spotting the stranger watching. He shifted nervously and nodded towards Merle, making the girl turn around. Merle shook his head- the girl had brown eyes and straight bangs and a few freckles adorning her nose. Her cheekbones were too sharp and her chin wasn't the right shape.

The girl watched him for a few seconds before he turned on his heel and went back the way he came, bumping into Milton on his way down the sidewalk. Somehow, that man always seemed to turn up.

"Oh, good," Milton said. "I was looking for you. I spoke to the Governor last night. He wants to meet with you, tomorrow." Milton stared at Merle expectantly, and when Merle gave no reply the smaller man stammered, "Um, well, he could come by and see you around noon, if that would be okay? Well, actually, he _will_ be by around noon. So, just, um, be ready for him. Alright?"

Merle grunted in response and shoved past Milton, hearing the man call out, "I'll take that as a yes?" behind him. Merle continued to ignore him. He went straight back to his room where he paced so much it was wonder he didn't wear out the floorboards. His mind had been going a mile a minute, thoughts running after one another like dogs chasing their tails.

He had to get out of Woodbury. He had to get out of this strange, too-perfect town and find his brother and his daughter and he had to do it as soon as he could.

His body was still embarrassingly weak. He hadn't eaten anything but a handful of fucking vegetables that morning. He'd lost muscle mass thanks to days spent in bed. His bruised knee was throbbing and he could still feel the ghost of his right hand trying so damn hard to make itself useful. Really, it felt like it was mocking him.

When he grew too exhausted to pace anymore, Merle sat on the edge of the bed and scrubbed his hand over his face. His brain was still working too hard, all of his thoughts pulsing against his skull and bringing back a familiar pain behind his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose, willing his headache away, and that was how Milton found him a good hour or so later.

"Merle?" Milton asked as he let himself into the room. Merle made a noise at the back of his throat, something that could have been acknowledgement of Milton's presence or could have just been Merle clearing his throat. Regardless, Milton awkwardly crossed the room to settle in the chair that always seemed to linger by the bed. "I, um, I was just coming to check in," Milton stuttered. Merle raised his eyes, seeing the ever-present clipboard in the other man's hands.

"Nothin's changed," Merle replied, words short and clipped. Milton paused for a minute, like he was expecting Merle to say more, but Merle muttered something about being "too tired for this shit" and laid back against the mattress to prove his point.

"Oh. Okay." Milton scribbled something down on his chart or file or whatever the fuck it was. Normally, he'd leave after Merle decided they were finished, but this time he stayed there, watching Merle somewhat studiously. Merle threw his arm over his eyes. Milton kept watching. Merle peeked out from underneath his arm, snarling at the researcher.

"What?" Merle demanded. Milton jumped a little, fumbling to recover.

"I just, um…Well, I had a question for you. Something, uh, a little different than normal." His words came out rushed and jumbled. He slid his glasses off and cleaned them on his shirt- a nervous habit. He replaced his glasses and looked back to Merle. "Something I've been, um, wondering…about you."

"Jus' spit it out, man," Merle said.

"Uh." Milton coughed and cleared his throat. "Who, um, who is Maddie?"

Merle's arm fell away from his face as he moved to sit up, staring hard at Milton with fierce blue eyes. The researcher shrank back in his chair.

"You talk in your sleep," he explained quietly. Merle looked him up and down, still snarling.

"Maddie ain't none'a yer fuckin' business," he declared. He kept his eyes on Milton's, daring him to challenge his words. Milton looked like he wanted to be as far away from Merle as humanly possible. He squirmed in the hold of Merle's icy gaze and his eyes kept seeking out the door across the room. Merle snorted. "Ya can leave now," he said, a demand rather than a suggestion, as he leaned back to give the other man enough space to get up. Milton rose carefully from the chair, backing out of the room with his eyes on Merle the whole time, like Merle was some kind of primal predator waiting to strike.

When the door clicked shut, Merle finally let his breath out. If he hadn't been exhausted before, he was fucking burnt out now. He fell heavily against the mattress, eyes wide open and staring at the tiled ceiling.

He had to get the hell out of Woodbury.

* * *

Merle's custom chopper was the centerpiece of Maddie's life.

When she was a toddler, she used to sit propped against her Uncle Daryl's chest on the porch or front lawn while her daddy tinkered with some part of the bike or another, tools in hand and beer always within reach. Daryl would sip at his own beer while he kept Maddie entertained, which he usually did by playing keep away with the beer bottle. Sometimes he and Merle would talk, but mostly they would keep quiet. Merle always kept his music on if only to have some background noise.

When she got a little older, she would sit by herself on the lawn, idly tying the stems of daisies and dandelions together while her daddy worked on the Triumph engine. On hot summer days, he'd invite her to help him wash it, a task which always ended in one of them chasing the other with the hose. They'd both wind up sopping wet by the time Daryl pulled up in the driveway, and nine times out of ten the Dixon who had control over the stream of water would aim it right at Daryl the moment he stepped out of the truck.

Maddie spent a great majority of her junior high years sitting on the chopper while her daddy polished it or worked on Daryl's truck, which got particularly temperamental around that time. They'd talk about everything from his fights with his bosses at the auto shop to her friends at school- or sometimes lack thereof, especially during the period when she started getting into schoolyard fights with her classmates.

"Who hit first?" Merle would always ask, and Maddie would skirt around the question by giving every other detail until she had nothing left to add but the fact that she'd thrown the first punch. "An' what made ya do that?" Merle would press. The reason was usually the same- some kid who knew the neighborhood Maddie came from or heard the way she talked would call her a hick or tell her she was white trash, and they'd call her daddy the same things, and sometimes, usually on the days when Daryl dropped her off at school in his dirty, rusty pick-up with its squeaky breaks and dented bumper, they'd throw her uncle into the mix until all her anger boiled over and she'd launch herself at the instigator.

There were quite a few times when, after Maddie had told her story, Merle would sigh heavily and prop himself against the bike and watch Maddie as she absently traced the SS insignia that shone on the side of the chopper. Merle would just watch her and wait until she finally raised her eyes to meet his again and he'd tell her, "Ya know ya shouldn't be doin' shit like that, girlie."

"I know," she'd mutter.

"But," he'd say, and she would watch him carefully as he picked his words, "yer a Dixon. An' Dixons are always doin' shit that they shouldn't be. It's in the genes, baby girl."

Maddie knew every inch of that bike as well as the lines in her very own palm. She knew the right way to wash it, to polish it and that it could get 41 miles to the gallon. She knew that there was a scratch on the right handlebar. She knew the way the sun caught on the silver parts, and she knew that the last time she'd seen it had also been the last time she'd seen her father- the day that herd of ambling corpses chased the Dixons away when they'd stopped to loot cars on the parkway. And she knew, without a shred of doubt, that it was sitting at the edge of the Greene family's expansive property, beside a tent that looked an awful lot like the one her uncle Daryl had pilfered from a sporting goods store just days after the world had officially gone to shit.

Maddie's heart leapt to her throat. Shane and Andrea and Carol's voices faded into the background as the sound of her own blood pulsing in her ears became the only thing she could hear. Her legs carried her towards the bike and she didn't notice Sophia calling her name or the others asking what was wrong. She didn't hear their footsteps, cushioned only slightly by the grass, as they followed her towards the Triumph. She stopped in front of the bike, drinking in the full picture. Her thumb brushed over the insignia on the side before her hand traveled up and wrapped around one of the handlebars. Her heart was beating hard and fast and she swallowed hard to push the sensation back into her chest. She blinked a few times, the world easing back into focus. Sophia's voice was the first the break through the haze.

"Maddie?" the younger girl said, voice soft like it was always was. Maddie glanced at her and then her eyes flicked up to the others. They were now joined by an older man with a white beard whose concerned eyes flitted between Sophia and Maddie. A dark skinned man jogged up to them mere seconds later. He first appeared excited as he smiled towards Sophia, but his expression quickly changed when he felt the worry in the air. Maddie took a slow breath to steady herself and asked, "Is he here?"

Nobody answered her. Carol hugged Sophia closer to her as she looked over towards the old man who was looking to Andrea for some sort of explanation. Andrea shook her head and looked to Shane. The dark skinned man, who was young and had a bandage wrapped around one of his hands, glanced around at the whole group before his eyes, too, settled on Shane. Maddie felt a growl working its way from the back of her throat. Her right hand tightened around her bow as she slammed her left against the seat of the chopper and demanded again, louder and with more urgency, "Is he here?!"

The group snapped back to life, everybody talking at once and Maddie not knowing who to look at or listen to. Confusion and anger mingled together and built up inside her as everyone spoke and nobody listened and Maddie's eyes flitted from one person to the next as their words and voices overlapped until one, finally, stood out from the rest.

"The hell's goin' on?" it called and for a moment Maddie didn't realize it was somebody new, somebody approaching the group from behind. Everyone stilled. Even the animals- the birds who were singing their daily songs- went quiet, and as silence blanketed the farm Maddie finally placed where she'd heard that voice before. Her breath caught in her throat and her bow clattered to the ground as her fingers, for the briefest of moments, forgot how to hold onto it as she slowly turned around.

"U-Uncle Daryl?"

* * *

Drawing in a deep breath, Daryl tilted his head towards the sky. Beads of sweat trickled down his temples from his forehead as the hot summer sun beat harshly down on him. Daryl exhaled slowly and sent out four quick, high whistles. The birds, perched high up in the trees that surrounded him, chirped cheerily back to him. A cloud of hungry gnats rose up from the tall grass, a hundred pairs of tiny wings beating in rapid succession as they buzzed towards him. Daryl snarled and swatted the insects away. He waited a few more moments before grunting in momentary defeat. He swiped the sweat off his brow and shook his head to clear it.

Daryl pressed forward, his crossbow beating against his shoulder blade as he walked. He didn't stop until the trees started to thin. Fewer and fewer leaves offered their cover as the outline of an old farmhouse came into view. Daryl blinked a few times to be sure the image was real before he called out, "Sophia!" The only answer he received came from the flutter of a bird's wings. On a whim, he tried, "Maddie Grace!", only to garner the same response. Still, this place was shelter. Even if neither girl turned out to be inside, there could be salvageable supplies within those walls.

The hunter swung his crossbow off his shoulder and loaded it with practiced ease. He crept cautiously towards the structure. As he stepped onto the porch its floorboards moaned loudly in protest. He stilled at the sound, muscles tense, wondering if it might attract unwanted attention. When nothing happened, Daryl let out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and closed the space between himself and the front door. He nudged the door open with the toe of his boot and thrust his bow inside before letting himself into the dark house.

The first thing Daryl noticed was the smell. The house reeked of mold and mildew and…fish? Daryl's brow furrowed as he sniffed at the air again. Yes, that definitely smelled like fish. He scanned the room and found the source of the out-of-place odor in the form of an opened, mostly-emptied tin of sardines. Curious, Daryl knelt down and plucked the small tin off the floor. He inspected it briefly before setting it back down and noticing for the first time the thin film of dust covering the wood flooring. When he looked closer, he noticed the dust appeared to have been recently disturbed.

Daryl dropped the little tin back on the floor and hoisted his crossbow up once more. He continued moving through the house. In the next room he found a small closet whose door was left slightly ajar. Daryl crept towards it and opened it the rest of the way with his foot. Inside there was a bundle of blankets and a pillow propped up in the corner- a clumsy, makeshift bed that, thanks to her build and lineage, was much too small for Maddie Grace to have slept in but looked just the right size for a scrawny twelve year old to fit in. Daryl's heart thudded in his chest.

"Sophia?!" he called as he let himself out the back door. "Sophia?!" he called out again as his feet his the hard ground. He looked around wildly only to find that he was still alone. The girl had not come tearing out of the woods to meet him. She wasn't crouched behind a bush or tree in the yard. If she had even been there in the first place, it appeared she had already moved on. Daryl sighed heavily, wiping the sweat off his brow. A gentle breeze hit him, whistling in his ears on its way to toss about the leaves and flowers on the bush across the yard.

Daryl's breath caught in his throat when he saw one pearl white petal glint in the sunlight; Cherokee roses. He strode across the lawn and squatted down beside the plant, rough fingers brushing over a spot where it looked as though a flower had already been picked. Daryl knew the story of those simple flowers like the back of his hand- they'd been a symbol of hope for hundreds of mothers who wept over the loss of their children. Daryl traced the lines on one silky petal before he made the decision to pluck the flower free of its branch. If he could not bring Sophia back today, he could at least offer Carol this token of hope. Hers seemed to be dwindling anyway- maybe this would help the woman get back to her senses.

The hunter held the delicate flower between his fingers and turned back towards the woods. Judging by the sun's position, he'd left himself plenty of time to get back to the Greene's farm before darkness fell upon the state of Georgia. It didn't take him long to get back at all, but Daryl heard activity on the property before the barn or the house or even the camp came into view. Many voices buzzed like bees, each one talking over the other. Carol's timid voice was lost beneath Andrea's much stronger one, while Shane's overpowered them both. He could make out T-Dog's somewhere in the middle, Dale's slightly stuttered syllables filling in the empty spaces. They were all talking too fast for Daryl to make out what they were saying, but it didn't take him long to realize that the whole conversation was being had in his area of the camp. At this realization, a growl worked its way out of the back of his throat. Daryl stuffed the Cherokee rose in his pocket and swung his crossbow over his shoulder as he rounded the corner.

"The hell's goin' on?" he barked when he found the group clustered around his brother's goddamn bike. Everyone fell silent, each head turning to look at him. From the center of the group, a shaky voice barely managed two words.

"U-Uncle Daryl?"

She was like a ghost, this girl that he'd been searching for. She was standing right beside Merle's chopper, her bow dropped on the ground at her feet as she stared nearly slack-jawed at him. Daryl blinked a few times. He swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand and he squinted as though trying to refocus his vision. She was there. She was real.

"Shit, girl," Daryl muttered. Those two words shocked her into motion. All at once, Daryl's crossbow fell to the ground and in its place was Maddie Grace, her arms thrown around his neck, her head buried against his shoulder. He closed well-muscled arms around her and pulled her as close as he possibly could. For one long minute it was just Daryl and Maddie, clinging to one another as though letting go meant losing each other again.

"Uncle Daryl?" came Shane's voice, drawing both Dixons back to the group. Maddie shifted, turning to face the others. Daryl's arm stayed slung around her shoulders, holding her so that her side was pressed against his. Daryl glanced at everyone in turn, only then realizing that Sophia was among them, her back to her mother's abdomen, Carol's arms wrapped around her little girl's shoulders. He nodded at the two of them before his eyes landed on Shane.

"She's-"

"What's going on out here?" came Rick's voice behind them. Daryl felt Maddie jump at the new voice. The former cop strode up to them, eyes finding the newcomer immediately. Daryl's arm tightened around Maddie's shoulders protectively as Rick looked her up and down before turning his attention to his partner, his question still apparent on his face.

"Her name's Maddie. She brought Sophia back," Carol piped up. Rick's eyes widened as he turned to Carol to find Sophia with her. A smile spread across his face as he realized just how real she was. Sophia smiled back to him, nodding her head.

"She called Daryl her uncle," Sophia added nervously. Rick glanced back to Daryl and Maddie, eyes questioning. Maddie made brief eye contact with him before she looked up to her uncle, wondering what she should do. Daryl squeezed her arm reassuringly, eyes on Rick as he explained, "She's Merle's."

If possible, the group grew even more still. It was like everyone collectively sucked in their breath, refusing to let it out or make any kind of move or noise as they all stared at the two Dixons. Were they looking for Merle in her, Daryl wondered. Could they see him in her eyes? Did they all finally feel guilty for what had happened in Atlanta? Were they realizing that it was not just his brother they'd let slip through their fingers, but a child's father?

Daryl's heart pounded against his ribs as he watched everyone watching him. The silence seemed to stretch on for hours, but in reality it was only seconds before Maddie finally spoke.

"Speakin' of," she said, still focused on Daryl. The hunter felt his chest tighten. He this was coming, didn't he? He carefully met her eyes, the same impossible blue as Merle's. They narrowed at him. "Where is he?" she asked. Daryl dropped his gaze. "Uncle Daryl?" Maddie prodded. Daryl couldn't bring himself to look at her again. His grip on her loosened, allowing her to move herself in front of him. "He…He isn't…" The girl shook her head and she let out a frustrated, almost desperate sort of huff that grabbed Daryl's attention. "Where's my daddy?" she asked.

"Maddie-" Rick started, always willing to take control. Daryl held out a hand to cut him off.

"Come on, let's give them some space," Dale said. Carol mumbled her agreement and something about bringing Sophia to see Hershel. Andrea, somewhat reluctantly, followed after the Peletiers towards the house. Dale nodded his approval and started making his way back to the RV, T-Dog trailing behind him. Rick and Shane exchanged a look before Shane shook his head and took off after the rest of the group. Rick spared one more glance towards the Dixons. He seemed ready to open his mouth to speak again, but Daryl shook his head. Rick nodded his understanding, said that he was going back to check on Carl, and left in the direction of the house.

Daryl breathed deeply and turned back to Maddie, whose eyes were still trained on him. She drew in a shaky breath and repeated her question. "Where's Daddy?"

"Mads," Daryl said slowly, his hand falling heavily on the girl's shoulder.

"He's here, ain't he?" Maddie pressed. "The Triumph's here, so he's gotta be here, too, don't he? A-An' where is here, anyway? How'd ya wind up with these people? Who're they?"

"Madelyn," Daryl said firmly. Maddie fell silent, though her questions still swirled in her eyes. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other impatiently. "A lot's happened since ya went missin', kid."

"That don't answer nothin'," Maddie argued. Daryl placed on hand on his hip while the other fell away from his niece's shoulder so that he could run his fingers through his hair.

"We found a camp down at a quarry a few days after we lost ya," he started. "We thought we'd stick around in case ya showed up, but ya never did. Merle….he had a plan. Part of it involved goin' on a supply run inta Atlanta with some'a the others."

"Atlanta?" Maddie interjected. "Why would he do that? We drove through that place, it was a shithole."

Daryl shrugged. "Don't matter why he did it, Maddie Grace, point is he did."

"Is he dead?" Maddie asked suddenly.

"He's…"

"Dead?" Maddie repeated.

"Yer daddy ain't easy to kill, kid," Daryl reprimanded. Maddie pressed her mouth into a thin line, just like Merle would when he feeling particularly impatient or frustrated. Her jaw was set exactly the way Merle always set his whenever he and Daryl argued. "Somethin' happened in Atlanta. Not with walkers, but with the others. Yer daddy got left behind."

Daryl couldn't even count the number of emotions that flashed across Maddie's eyes. He reached out to grasp her shoulder again, but she shuddered and stepped away from him.

"We tried to go back fer 'im," Daryl went on, "but he wasn't there anymore. We looked fer 'im."

Maddie took in a breath, trying to steady herself. "He's gone, then? Jus' like that?" she asked.

"I don't think gone," Daryl said, although even he was starting to doubt that now. He tried his best to push that doubt aside for Maddie's sake. "He's jus' missin'."

"In Atlanta. With all them walkers." Maddie shook her head, one hand covering her mouth as if she could catch any sobs that might try to break free. She shifted her weight again before started to pace, yet another habit she'd picked up from Merle. Daryl caught her by the wrist, forcing her to look at him.

"Yer daddy's the toughest fucker I know," Daryl said. "He's out there, alrigh'? Somewhere. He's a survivor, Maddie Grace, an' he's out there. An' we're gonna find 'im."

Maddie couldn't keep her doubt from creeping into her expression. She chewed at the side of her thumb as she listened to her uncle, trying to hold onto the conviction in his voice.

"How d'you know?" she asked.

"I found you, didn't I?" Daryl countered. A small smile tugged at the corners of Maddie's mouth. She nodded slightly, moving closer to her uncle and letting him slip his arm around her again.

"Alrigh'," she said. "But jus' so ya know- I'm the one who found you."

A light chuckle escaped from Daryl's lips and he squeezed her in a sort of one-armed hug. "Guess ya did, girlie." He pressed a quick kiss to her temple. "Guess ya did."


End file.
